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The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec

by John Trevena · English · Gutenberg #35141 · 509,531 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec

Author: John Trevena


        
Release date: February 22, 2011 [eBook #35141]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35141

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLOWSHARE AND THE SWORD: A TALE OF OLD QUEBEC ***




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[Illustration: Cover art]





THE PLOWSHARE

AND

THE SWORD


A TALE OF OLD QUEBEC



BY

ERNEST GEORGE HENHAM



"Empire and Love! the vision of a day."--_Young_



TORONTO: THE COPP, CLARK CO., LIMITED

LONDON: CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED

MCMIII.  All Rights Reserved




A Toi




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER

       I.--THE FATHER OF WATERS
      II.--AN ENEMY IN THE CAMP
     III.--CHRISMATION
      IV.--MAKERS OF EMPIRE
       V.--DOUBLE DEALING
      VI.--THE INTRODUCTION TO A FIGHT
     VII.--THE FIGHT
    VIII.--COUCHICING
      IX.--THE GAUNTLET DOWN
       X.--PILLARS OF THE HOUSE
      XI.--THE SWORD IMBRUED
     XII.--SPLENDOUR
    XIII.--ENCHANTMENT
     XIV.--FIRESIDE AND GROVE
      XV.--GLORIOUS LIFE
     XVI.--CLAIRVOYANCE
    XVII.--STAMEN
   XVIII.--COMMITTAL
     XIX.--ENKINDLED
      XX.--SACRAMENTAL
     XXI.--IRON AND STEEL
    XXII.--OR AND AZURE
   XXIII.--THE EVERLASTING HILLS
    XXIV.--ART-MAGIC
     XXV.--NOVA ANGLIA
    XXVI.--STIGMA
   XXVII.--REVELATION
  XXVIII.--BODY AND MIND
    XXIX.--WOMAN'S LOVE IS LIFE
     XXX.--LAND-LOCKED
    XXXI.--IN THE FALL OF THE SNOW
   XXXII.--ARMS AND THE MAN
  XXXIII.--THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED
   XXXIV.--THE THIRST
    XXXV.--SWORDCRAFT
   XXXVI.--SETTLEMENT
  XXXVII.--THE PLOWSHARE
 XXXVIII.--VALEDICTORY




THE PLOWSHARE AND THE SWORD



CHAPTER I.

THE FATHER OF WATERS.

It was an evening of spring in the year of strife 1637.  The sun was
slowly withdrawing his beams from the fortress of Quebec, which had
been established some thirty years back, and was then occupied by a
handful of settlers and soldiers, to the number of 120, under the
military governorship of Arnaud de Roussilac.  The French politicians
of the seventeenth century were determined colony builders.  However
humble the settler, he was known and watched, advanced or detained, by
the vigilant government of Paris.  The very farms were an extension,
however slight, of the militarism of France, and a standing menace to
Britain.  Where, further south, Englishmen founded a rude settlement,
the French in the north had responded by a military post.  The policy
of peace taught by that intrepid adventurer, Jacques Cartier, exactly a
hundred years before, had become almost forgotten.  "This country is
now owned by your Majesty," Cartier had written.  "Your Majesty has
only to make gifts to the headmen of the Iroquois tribes and assure
them of your friendship, to make the land yours for ever."

But Samuel de Champlain, the colony-maker who followed Cartier, was a
man of pride who understood how to make war, but had left unlearned the
greater art of bidding for peace.  In 1609, acting under what he
believed to be a flash of genius, Champlain brought against the
Iroquois the Algonquins, their bitter hereditary enemies; and with
their aid, and the use of the magic firearms which had never before
been heard in the country of the wild north, he had utterly defeated
the proud and unforgiving people who had won the admiration and respect
of Cartier the pioneer, thus making the tribes of the Iroquois
confederacy sworn enemies of France for ever.  Had Providence been
pleased to make Samuel de Champlain another Cartier, had the latter
even succeeded the former, Canada, from the rough Atlantic seaboard to
the soft Pacific slope, might well have been one great colony of France
to-day.

It was, however, not the past history of that land, nor even its
present necessities, which occupied the mind of the Abbe La Salle,
great-uncle of the future Robert of that name, who, half-a-century
later, was to discover the mighty river of Mississippi--which was to
deprive the St. Lawrence of its proud birth-title, the Father of
Waters--and explore the plains of Michigan.  The abbe was lying, that
spring evening, on the heights, smoking a stone pipe filled with coarse
black tobacco from Virginia, and watching a heavy ship which rocked
upon the swift current where it raced round the bend in the shore.  He
was building up a future for himself, a fabric of ambition upon
foundations of diplomacy and daring.  This senior priest of the
fortress--there were two others, Laroche the bully, and St Agapit the
ascetic--was a handsome man, powerfully built, of fair complexion
marred only by a sword-cut above the left eye.  Although priest in
name, he was more at his ease flicking a rapier than thumbing a
breviary; an oath was habitually upon his tongue; a hot patriot was he,
and above all a fighter.  He had fought a duel before his early mass,
and had left the altar to brag of his prowess.  He was, in short, one
of the most notorious of that band of martial Churchmen, imitators of
Armand du Plessis Richelieu, for which colonial France at that age was
noted.  Far from the eye of the mighty Cardinal and the feeble mind of
Louis the Just, they swaggered through life, preaching the divine
mission of the Church to the natives one hour, drinking deeply, or
duelling in terrible earnest, the next.  The lives of the fighting
priests of Quebec make not the least interesting page of that romance
which three centuries have written around the heights.

Wooden huts were dotted thinly along the slopes, which ended where the
forest of hemlocks began, about half a mile from the edge of the cliff;
and below, where a log landing-stage jutted into the stream, a
man-of-war flying the flag of France rode at her ease, a party of
turbaned men, no bigger to the abbe's eyes than children, gambling at
dice upon her fore-deck.  Anchored beside the shore opposite appeared
another vessel, more rakish in build, less heavy at the stern, and
showing four masts to the Frenchman's three.  A pine branch fluttered
at the main truck, and a great bough of hemlock depended over her bows,
completely draping the heavy and grotesque figure-head.

It was this latter ship which La Salle was watching with suspicion, as
attentively as the distance would permit.  The abbe mistrusted all
foreigners, even when, as in this case, they came bringing gifts.  He
had recently been informed of that hasty alliance patched up between
France and Holland, and the policy found no favour in his eyes; he
frowned to think that a Dutch man-of-war should be permitted to sail up
the St. Lawrence and cast anchor beneath the heights.  Was there any
genuine desire on the part of Holland to strengthen the hands of her
new ally, or were the crafty Dutchmen playing some deep game of their
own?  The Indians, who surrounded the fortress as closely as they
dared, were entirely hostile to the holders of the land.  Rumours of at
least one band of Englishmen, friendly with the natives, hiding in the
forest or among the clefts in the rock, waiting to strike a blow when
opportunity offered against the servants of King Louis, had been
circulated by a French dwarf known by the name of Gaudriole, a
malevolent, misshapen creature, who passed unharmed about the country,
and escaped hanging merely because of his value as an interpreter of
the various native dialects.  The Dutch ship, which had arrived only
that afternoon, might well have sailed northward with some plan of
joining for the time with either Indian or English to wrest the mastery
of the maritime provinces from the clutch of France.

While La Salle thus meditated with a mind to his own advancement, his
keen ears detected the fall of footsteps over the crisp grass, and he
pulled himself round to discover a priest, like himself wearing a
sword, a stout man, panting after his long climb.

"What news, Laroche?" called the smoker, indicating the distant warship
with the stem of his pipe.

"Corpus Domini!" gasped the new comer.  "The sun strikes across yonder
rocks like the fire of Gehenna.  What news, ask you, of yonder
piratical thief of a Dutchman?  She is under commission, mark you, to
pick a quarrel and fight us for this coast, for all the fair talk of
alliance and the chopping up of the Spanish Netherlands between Paris
and Holland----"

"What of Roussilac?" broke in La Salle.

"The commandant is now aboard the floating gin-tank, and there you may
swear he shall impress upon the mind of Van Vuren, her master, the
certain fact that Louis the Thirteenth is lord here, from the sea
outward to wherever this endless land may reach.  But we know the
Hollander.  A smooth rascal, who flatters to a man's face, and when his
back is turned--Proh stigmata Salvatoris!  Dost remember the Dutchman
who pinked you in the shoulder at Avignon?"

He broke off with the question, and his fat body shook with laughter.

"A priest must remain a priest in Avignon," said La Salle sourly; "but
he may here be a man.  What news has this Hollander brought?"

"Why, that England is in revolt from end to end," answered Laroche
gladly.  "We shall find none of their clumsy ships, nor any of their
barbarian fist-using soldiers here.  The people have risen against the
king.  A man named John Hampden has refused to pay ship-money, a new
tax levied to raise a fleet to defy the Pope, the Dutch, and the
Cardinal, and this man carries the people with him.  Also this Charles
has made himself hated in the north by forcing some new form of heresy
and insult to his Holiness in the shape of a prayer-book down the
throats of the Scotch.  All but a handful have fallen away from him,
says Van Vuren, even the lords temporal have begun to despair, and many
are preparing to set out for the West."

La Salle's martial spirit flamed up.  "Here?" he questioned eagerly.

"They would no more dare seek a home here than in Rochelle," went on
Laroche.  "They go south to take up the lands where the last of their
mariners harried the Spaniards.  It is reported that Lord Saye and Sele
proposes to transport himself to Virginia, Lord Warwick to Connecticut,
and the yeomen, weary of heavy taxes and fearing the extortions of the
Star Chamber, seek information concerning New England now that the star
of the old has set.  We hold the seas, France or Holland unaided is
strong enough to sink the rotten barques which the English call their
fleet.  There is no money forthcoming for new ships.  Richelieu shall
soon rule the world!  Come down.  We shall perchance obtain a bottle of
wine along the Rue des Pecheurs before vespers."

"I join you at Michel's after sundown," said La Salle.  "At this
present time I remain in the wilderness."

He stood up, brushed the dry grass from his almost entirely secular
costume, and gazed landwards under the wide brim of his hat, until a
crow came presently flapping out of the valley where the great forest
began.  The black bird soared over the heads of the martial priests,
and dropped slowly to drink of the river.

"There are finer birds in yonder forest," muttered La Salle, a smile
about his mouth.

"Ha!  An assignation?" exclaimed the stout priest, and at the
suggestion wiped his moist forehead and laughed loudly.  Then he turned
and rolled away down the slope, shouting a song of the cabaret which
had been popular among the soldiers of Paris two years before.  La
Salle followed his progress with a cynical smile, before he also
turned, and descended upon the opposite side out of sight of the river,
and crossed the plain where the French were to rule for two centuries
more and then to fly with the kilted men of Scotland at their heels.
Here the cool hemlock forest murmured, the dense forest which stretched
northward to the mud flats of the salt bay named after the adventurer
Hudson, whose lost bones were somewhere tossed in its cold and lonely
waters.  The sun was hidden by the hills, big golden lilies stared at
the priest, an indigo-winged butterfly tumbled into shelter to die at
the ending of the day.  The dew sweated out of the ground, and the
foliage smelt like wine.

"This is better than the gutters of Paris," muttered the priest.

The bushes parted at the sounding of his voice, and a radiant vision
stood before him, backed by the greenwood shade.  A young woman, but a
few years removed from childhood, stepped forth, hungrily regarding the
abbe with a splendid pair of eyes, brown-red and full of fire, and
burning with the health and passion of life.

This young maid was Onawa of the Cayugas, that boldest of the tribes of
the allied Iroquois, who held the interior under their confederacy, all
the plains, backwoods, the river and seaboard, with the exception of
those spots where military posts had been established--the small
palisaded farm, and even the trader's hut, being marked upon the map as
military posts, and made so by the simple order, "_Le roi le veut_."
This girl had been present at the council fire when Roussilac had
endeavoured to heal the breach between French and Indians by specious
promises, none of which he intended to fulfil; La Salle also had been
present, accompanying the commandant as the representative of the
Church.  The council had been a failure, owing, said the soldiers, to
the trickery of Gaudriole, the only interpreter available; but in fact
due to the overbearing manner of Roussilac, who fell into Champlain's
error of relegating an uncivilised people to the level of animals; and
to the innate hatred entertained by the Indians for their conquerors.
The Iroquois sachems answered the representative smoothly that they
would consider his offer of peace and the terms accompanying the same,
and subsequently resolved that, though they might tolerate English and
Dutch in their midst, their final answer to the white race who had
armed the Algonquins against them could only be made by arrow and
tomahawk.  Onawa, who because of her sex was allowed to take no part in
the discussion, held aloof, and regarded the figure of La Salle
standing haughtily in the yellow glow of the fire.  When the deputation
withdrew she followed and caught the priest's attention with a smile;
and when night fell she was still watching the lights of the rude
little town upon the cliffs.

La Salle was no woman's man.  He was too healthy a soldier; but he was
ambitious, and had moulded his policy upon that of his master, the
character which did not shame to describe itself in the unscrupulous
terms, "I venture upon nothing till I have well considered it; but when
I have once taken my resolution I go directly to my end.  I mow down
and overthrow all that stands in my way, and then cover the whole with
my red mantle."  The daughter of an Iroquois chief had great power
among her own people, and the priest reflected that he might add some
fame to his name and win perhaps the red hat for his head, if he could
secure the withdrawal of the hostile tribes; or, better, inflame them
against the English, who were, so said report, but awaiting an
opportunity to strike at the north.  But a difficulty lay in his path;
neither he nor Onawa could speak the other's tongue.

But this was not an overwhelming obstacle, because then, as now, the
language of signs might make a dumb tongue eloquent.  Thus it was not
altogether by accident that the handsome abbe came to the fringe of the
forest at evening, and it was not chance alone which brought Onawa from
the camp into the enemy's country.

She held between her fingers a flower, a lily as golden as that
emblazoned upon the royal standard; and while standing before him she
placed the flower to her forehead, and then gave it him, without
turning away her eyes, and without shrinking from his.

La Salle understood that she was expressing her willingness to give
herself to him, with or without the will and consent of her people.

"By St. Anthony!" he muttered.  "How shall I tell the jade that I have
abjured women?  Does she then desire me to strip and paint, that she
may make of me a heathen husband?"

He shook his head, and the light changed in the eyes of the girl, and
her brow wrinkled.  He saw the sudden gleam of her teeth and heard her
sigh.

"Jezebel of the forest," he cried, "name me this flower!"

He extended it with a sign, and the ready girl spoke softly a
dissyllabic word.  La Salle repeated it, again indicating the flower,
and Onawa nodded vigorously.

"Ah!" exclaimed the priest.  "Here is light out of darkness."

He came nearer and took the girl's hand, making the same sign.  She
spoke again.  He touched her hair.  Again she spoke.  Then her cheek,
her nose, her lips, her ears, and Onawa answered him every time,
laughing delightedly as the priest pronounced each soft Iroquois word
at her dictation.

"A few such lessons, and Gaudriole may be hanged," said La Salle.

Then, with a quick gesture, Onawa put out her fawn-coloured hand, and
touched his right eye with the tip of one finger.

"L'oeil," answered La Salle.

She patted his cheek.

"La joue," he said.

She tweaked his nose, with a laugh.

"Le nez," he gasped.

She slapped his mouth.

"La bouche," he growled, adding, "I might have said, 'La grimace.'"

The girl was very near.  He caught her and drew her up to him, and
pressed his lips powerfully upon hers.

"C'est le baiser," he said carelessly.

The salutation of the kiss was unknown among the Iroquois.  Onawa
started, thrilling with a feeling altogether strange; then turned to
him, putting back her head as a Parisienne might have done to receive
her lover's salute.

"Le baiser _again_," she demanded, clinging to the word which had made
life a new thing.  "Le baiser _again_."

"By all the wiles of Satan!" exclaimed La Salle, thrusting her back.
"She is in league with the enemy."

Again he held her before him, his arms slightly bent, and said
haltingly in the tongue of the hated race, which he knew little better
than the Cayuga: "You speak the English?"

Onawa's face lighted.  "A ver' little words," she answered.  Then she
drew up to him, her eyes more eloquent, and softly repeating her
bilingual request:

"Le baiser again."

It was dark when La Salle reached the group of huts planted upon the
cliffs.  The warships were invisible and unlighted, because lamps would
have revealed figures patrolling upon deck, and there were keen-eyed
enemies watching from either shore.  The priest stumbled along the
rocky path, his long boots kicking the stones before him, until he came
near the waterside and the Rue des Pecheurs, situated immediately below
the main cliff on the site occupied to-day by Little Champlain Street.
The way was inhabited, as its name implied, by fisher-folk who swept
the wide river when times were fairly peaceful, and served as soldiers
in war.  There was no street in the accepted sense of the word.  A few
cave dwellings burrowed out of the rock; huts here and there, a tent,
or a simple erection of sticks and stones plastered over with mud, were
barely visible, sprinkled irregularly, out of the darkness along the
high shore.

Where a worn pathway went round and curved towards the landing-stage, a
square log-hut occupied some considerable portion of space.  A very
dull lamp smoked over the entry, below a board bearing the inscription,
"Michel Ferraud, Marchand du Vin."  A grumbling noise of conversation
and the rattle of dice sounded within.

"Deuce and three for the third time!" shouted the high-pitched voice of
the Abbe Laroche.  "I'll throw you again, Dutchman--one more throw for
the honour of the Church; and the devil seize me if this box plays me
the trick again."

La Salle bent his head and entered the cabaret.  He made two steps,
then stood motionless, his fingers feeling for his sword-hilt.

Laroche looked up, the dice-box poised in his fat right hand, and a
smile wandered across his face at beholding the attitude of his
fellow-priest.

"The master of the Dutch man-of-war," he called, indicating the player
who sat opposite him.  "Sieur," he shouted over the table, with a burst
of unctuous laughter, "the renowned swordsman, L'Abbe La Salle."

Then Van Vuren looked up.




CHAPTER II.

AN ENEMY IN THE CAMP.

At sunset Roussilac, the commandant of Quebec, after receiving
reassuring reports from the sentries and thus closing his official
duties for the day, went aboard the man-of-war.  Having personally
superintended the shipping of the gangway, to satisfy himself that
immediate communication with the shore was cut off, he withdrew to his
cabin, which he occupied in preference to his hut upon the slope.
Before retiring to his hammock, he mentally reviewed his position, the
difficulties of which had not been lessened by the unexpected arrival
of the Dutch ship.

It had never been the way of Holland to go out of her course to be
friendly.  The commandant could not forget that she had colonised large
tracts of country further south; he knew that, like England, she
aspired to extend her influence beyond the seas; and what more probable
than that, snatching at the opportunity afforded by this alliance, her
government should have commissioned Van Vuren to spy out the land and
report upon its possibilities?

Already sufficient dangers threatened the fortress.  Disquieting
rumours had reached Roussilac of late.  The Indians, it was said, were
growing more restless and bolder because they had discovered the
weakness of the French.  It was certain that a band of five Englishmen
had been seen in the district by Gaudriole, and these were probably the
precursors of more formidable numbers.  The islanders, Roussilac knew,
had a knack of appearing when least expected; and Agincourt had long
since shown the world that they were never so formidable as when few in
numbers, short of supplies, and worn after heavy marching.  It was this
fear which had induced the commandant to adopt the plan of retiring to
the ship each night, so that, whatever might befall his men upon the
mainland, he at least would be in a position of comparative safety.

By this it will be perceived that Roussilac was not altogether of that
stuff of which heroes are made.  Nor was he a man of exceptional
ability.  He had fought his way up to his present post of
responsibility with the aid of fortune and a natural capacity for
obeying orders, although, while he had been ascending, he preferred to
forget his Norman parents and connections, merely because they happened
to be poor and humble folk.  His mother's brother and her husband, the
latter driven out of France for heresy, were living upon a small
holding, little more than a day's journey from the fortress; Jean-Marie
Labroquerie, their only son, had lately joined the ranks of his small
army; but the commandant was too proud, or perhaps too cowardly, to
acknowledge these kinsfolk, and in his heart he found the hope that
Madame Labroquerie, his aunt, a woman of bitter memories, with a sharp
tongue and a passionate nature, would never seek to reach the fortress
and shame him before his men.  The selfish spirit of Richelieu was
working on in Arnaud de Roussilac, as indeed it worked through the
character of almost all the creatures of the Cardinal.

Still perplexed by the problems of his position, the commandant recited
the prayers without which no soldier of the age could have deemed
himself safe from the perils of the night, placed his sword ready to
his hand, and retired to his hammock, although darkness had scarcely
settled over the land.  In a few minutes he was asleep.

These early slumbers were rudely broken by a heavy hand which seized
and shook him by the shoulder.  The glare of a torch hurt his eyes,
when he opened them to discover the tanned features of D'Archand, the
master of the ship, between the folds of the netting spread to exclude
the ever-hostile insects.

"An attack," muttered Roussilac, in the first moment of consciousness.
"A plague upon these English."

"Hasten!" cried D'Archand.  "The fortress is in an uproar.  La Salle
has insulted the Dutch master, and a duel is imminent."

At that Roussilac awoke fully, and, stretching out his arm, drew the
square port-hole open, admitting the sound of the tidewater under the
ship's counter, and beyond, a sharp murmur of excited voices.  Craning
his neck, he discovered an intermittent flashing of lights along the
pathway under the cliff.

"Now may the saints help me!" the commandant exclaimed, as he felt for
his cloak.  "I have no shadow of power over these priests.  More
willingly would I oppress a witch than cross a Churchman.  Magic can
only rot a man's body, but excommunication touches his soul.  What is
the cause of this quarrel?"

"I know not," answered D'Archand.  "But duelling has been forbidden
altogether----"

"By Church and State alike," the commandant interrupted testily.  "The
Cardinal might as well forbid the plague to strike his army.  When the
Church itself breaks the law, how is the head of the army to act?"

The captains speedily left the ship, ascended the winding path, and
entered the street of fishermen.

All the inhabitants appeared to be gathered together upon the low
ground, to witness the by no means unprecedented spectacle of a duel
between priest and layman.  They stood six deep under the cliff, with
as many more upon the side of the river; old and young, women in soiled
stiff caps, ragged settlers, and soldiers in faded accoutrements side
by side.  A ring of men, holding spluttering pine torches, or oil
lanterns, the flames of which smoked and flickered up and down the horn
sides, enclosed an open space where two shadowy figures swayed almost
noiselessly, facing one another, each right arm directing a rapier
which flashed continually in the confused lights.

"I would the challenger were any other than the Abbe La Salle,"
muttered Roussilac.  "He would cut off my hopes of Heaven as readily as
he shall presently run through yonder Dutchman."

"There is no finer swordsman in the new world than the abbe," whispered
D'Archand in his ear.  "If Van Vuren be killed, the Cardinal shall
account you responsible, and I too shall not escape blame.  This new
alliance may not hold if the deed be known in Paris."

Roussilac started forward, and scattered the people, who were too
excited to recognise him.

"Put up your swords!" he shouted.  "I charge you, sir priest, in the
King's name to cease fighting with this man, who is my guest and our
common ally."

"Corpus Domini!" cried Laroche, staggering towards the commandant, his
big face flushed with excitement and liquor.  "Order the wind to cease,
commandant, or yon river to stop its flow.  Attempt to restrain La
Salle when his blood is hot!  Know you, sir, this is an affair of
honour."

"It is not you who shall suffer from the breaking of the law, sir
priest," protested the representative.  "By St. Gris! a master-stroke!"
he exclaimed, unable altogether to suppress his soldierly instincts.

La Salle, foreseeing an interruption, had closed with his enemy in a
vigorous skirmish of rapid and clever feints, culminating in a stroke
the admirable technique of which had wrung an involuntary testimony
from the commandant.  Van Vuren escaped by a side movement, which to
the onlookers partook of the nature of a lucky accident.  But there was
a smear of blood upon the priest's rapier when he pressed again to the
attack.

"Yon Dutchman shall be the only sufferer," said Laroche.  "Only
bloodshed can satisfy the Abbe La Salle.  Nature must run her course.
There stands a scar upon my brother's back, made by this Van Vuren's
sword four years ago at the corner of a dark turning in Avignon.  What
was the cause?  Well, commandant, a woman they say is always the cause;
but my friend is, like myself, a priest, and therefore above suspicion
so far as women are concerned.  Dutchmen have hard heads and slow
brains.  It is also said of them that if they can run from an enemy
with honour they will run.  My brother was one night returning home
after administering at a sick bed; beside a corner he heard a step,
and, before he could turn, a sword point went in his back.  The
Dutchman's honour was satisfied.  He ran, but he was marked as he
escaped.  In Avignon during those days Van Vuren was known by another,
and less honourable, name.  But the devil may wear a halo and remain
the devil."

While the abbe spoke, some heavy clouds, which had gathered over the
heights, darkening the night, began to discharge themselves in rain,
which presently lashed in so heavy a torrent that the pine torches were
extinguished, and the men holding the lanterns had much difficulty to
maintain the feeble flames.  La Salle, with his back to the storm,
drove the Hollander before him through the hissing rain, the people
falling away as the duellists advanced, their blades gleaming and
grating through the silvery lines of water.  A muffled shout went up.
Van Vuren had been palpably hit upon the shoulder.  La Salle smiled
grimly and still pressed on, lunging repeatedly over the captain's
guard, taking every risk of a wound as he hastened to make his victory
sure.

Roussilac cleared the road, the people only obeying when the soldiers
prepared to enforce their officer's order.

"Gentlemen," cried the commandant, advancing, with an imprecation upon
the rain, "drop your swords, I pray of you."

"The devil seize you!" shouted La Salle, throwing out his left arm.
"His point was not an inch from me."

"Put up your swords," repeated Roussilac, boldly disregarding the
remonstrance.  "Sir priest, it is the will of the Cardinal."

These were potent words, and for one moment the abbe hesitated.  He
lowered his point with an angry side glance upon his interrupter, and
the affair would then have finished had not a dark figure stopped out
from the shadow under the cliff, and thrown itself into position with
the muffled warning, "En garde!"

"Ah, dog!" cried La Salle, starting forward through the rain with
scarcely a ray of light between him and his adversary.

When a line of lightning broke the sky, an exclamation burst from his
lips and his bold cheek blanched.  During that momentary illumination
La Salle beheld his enemy clearly.  He saw a mean man clad in a suit of
faded red with torn and stained ruffles; his hair gathered behind and
tied with a piece of grass; his hat broken out of shape and adorned
sadly with half a plume.  And when Laroche held up a lantern, the
fighting priest saw further that what he had taken for a negroid skin
was merely a mask which covered the stranger's face, slit with holes
for the eyes and mouth.

"This," muttered La Salle, cold with terror as he warded off an attack
which was far more aggressive than that of Van Vuren, "this is the work
of Satan."

Roussilac touched D'Archand, pointing along the path which bent down to
the river, and whispered, "Wait for the lightning."

When the flash passed, the master saw the big figure of the Dutchman
hurrying to reach his ship, his sword still drawn in his hand.

"Then, who is this?" exclaimed D'Archand, with a frightened oath,
indicating through the beating rain the man behind the mask.

Roussilac signed himself, and said nothing.

Laroche hurried up, his big face streaming, the lantern shaking in his
hands like a will-o'-the-wisp, his attitude grotesque with terror.

"What witchcraft is here?" he shouted.  "See you how this Dutchman has
changed body and appearance as well as name?"

"Van Vuren is not here," said Roussilac gravely.  "He ran when the abbe
lowered his sword; and so soon as he had gone--nay, before--yonder
figure stepped out of the darkness under the cliff and challenged La
Salle.  You see he has covered his face.  It is the mad Englishman who
fights for the love of fighting.  And the English cover the earth like
flies."

"I shall stiffen his arm, be he heretic or devil," said the stout
priest; and he went and stood near the duellists, and, boldly facing
the stranger, cursed him prolifically in the name of Holy Church and
the King of Rome.

The stranger did not turn, and only acknowledged the anathemas by a
perfectly distinct laugh which issued weirdly from the mask.

No man had ever called La Salle's bravery in question.  Facing an
enemy, who had started as it were from the rocks before him in the rain
and the lightning, he met the resolute attack and parried every lunge.
In truth, the priest was a fine swordsman; but his resource in skirmish
and detail was here taxed to the uttermost.  All he could do at his
best was to hold out the short sword, which flashed in and out of the
rain, controlled by a wrist of steel and an iron arm.  The masked man
gave forth no sound of hard breathing.  He was a master of swordcraft,
and La Salle knew that he had met his match.  Here was no nervous
Dutchman to be trifled with; no hectoring soldier with a hearty oath
and bluff swagger.  La Salle sweated, and his breath came pricking in
hot gasps, and a cold thrill trickled along his back when he allowed
himself to wonder who the enemy might be.

The stranger guarded against treachery, hugging the cliff lest anyone
with hostile intentions might pass behind and reach his back.  Had he
moved out, he would assuredly have beaten down the abbe's defence; as
it was, the latter was acting upon the defensive, and doing so with
much difficulty.

The rain stopped on an instant.  As suddenly the clouds fell back to
admit the light; and the rugged shadows of the rocks traced fantastic
shapes along the Rue des Pecheurs.

The strained voice of Laroche broke the stillness.

"A touch!"

"Liar!" shouted back the hard-driven but proud priest, although he felt
warm blood oozing between his fingers.

The masked man feared the light which followed the sweeping away of the
storm clouds.  He bestirred himself, feinted with amazing rapidity
within and without the pass, then his limber wrist stiffened for the
second, and his point darted in like a poisonous snake over the hilt
and wounded La Salle upon the muscle of the sword-arm.

"A touch!" shouted the captains together, both too excited to have any
thought for the law.

"An accident," gasped the proud priest.  "A misfortune."

"Well, here's a touch!" called a deep English voice; and as the
challenger made his nationality known he lunged beneath the abbe's
blade, thrusting out until the blood spurted upward in a jet.

"Yes, yes.  A touch--I confess," panted La Salle; and he staggered
back, crossed his legs, and fell heavily.

"By St. Michael!" shouted the fat Laroche, furiously pulling out his
sword and reaching towards the shadow under the cliff.  "You shall pay,
assassin, for this."

The mysterious stranger chuckled, disarmed Laroche in a moment,
scratching the stout abbe's wrist with his point, and before the two
officers and the handful of soldiers could bestir themselves, he had
disappeared round the bend of the Rue des Pecheurs.  Roussilac ran to
the ending of the way, but found no sign of the masked man, who had
vanished as mysteriously as he had arrived.




CHAPTER III.

CHRISMATION.

The day following the duel La Salle was under the hands of the
surgeon--who, in the ignorance of that age, treated his patient for
loss of blood by letting yet more--and Roussilac was sending forth men
with the charge to find the hiding-place of the Englishman, and to fail
not at their peril.  However, they did at that time fail.  Not even the
cunning hunchback Gaudriole had been able to discover the habitation of
the mysterious swordsman who had dared to enter the fortress and openly
defy its officers and men.

Even the Indian might have walked behind the scrub of tangled
willow-growth over the cave-dwelling, and known nothing of it, had his
eyes or his nose failed to discern the thread of wood-smoke often
curling above the blackened crater of a hollow tree which had been
ingeniously converted into a chimney.  A grass-covered knoll made the
roof of the dwelling, the entrance to which only became apparent from a
stone causeway, shelving gradually between the roots of pine trees, and
enclosed by massive logs which banked the eastern front of the burrow.

Upon the threshold of this rude home a brown boy was playing with a
wolf-hound, while awaiting his father's return from that daring visit
to the fortress.

Around him Nature thundered like a great organ.  The leaden waters of
the great discharge roared where the bush made a screen which no eyes
could pierce; the falls of the Ouiataniche smoked below.  Spray flew
above the scrub, bathing the dog's fur and the strong arms of the
child.  The one bayed, the other shouted, to the hard north wind that
swept overhead, lashing the branches, tearing the summits of the pines,
snatching the dry wisps of grass and whirling them under the clouds.
The dark bush groaned.  The great rocks bore their buffetings with
hollow protests.  Ravens croaked as they swung up and down; divers
wailed from the weedy creeks.  The boughs chafed, and the plumed
foliage clashed together, loosening a rain of cones and showers of pine
needles.

"I want to grow.  I want to be strong," shouted the boy to his panting
companion.  "I want to wear a sword and fight.  I want to be a soldier
and shed blood.  I want to live!"

The dog broke away barking, and rushed through the scrub.  The child
ran after him, and they met upon the dripping rocks, which made a
natural fortification to the cave beyond.

A magnificent spectacle rolled away, as full of sound and motion as a
battlefield.  Well had the Indians named that place the Region of the
Lost Waters.  Islands heaved out of the raging expanse, small and
densely covered with torn vegetation, every ridge of pine-crested rock
moaning under the north wind, splintered and rough and ragged, scarred
like the duellist's arm.  About these islands the separate torrents
thundered, seeking outlets for escape.  There were a hundred channels,
each striving to be the main, each at war with all others, each leaping
white-crested down to join its rivals at the stupendous fall.  Every
separate discharge lifted up its voice to drown the combined clamour of
its rivals.

A canoe shot the rapids between two islands, quivering like an arrow in
its flight.  It swept down, a mere feather upon the water, with only a
shell of rough bark between its two occupants and the hereafter.  The
steerer, a handsome and pure-blooded woman of the Cayugas, crouched
like a figure of bronze against the cross-piece, wielding her paddle
with an easy carelessness which spoke of perfect confidence.  By a turn
of her wrist the shell of bark swept off a projecting rock; by a deft
motion of her body, almost too subtle for the sight, the canoe glanced
from a reef where the waves were wild; another, more determined,
motion, and the fragile thing pierced a sheet of spray and swept to the
shore.  The child caught the shell and held fast, while the man who had
conquered the fighting priest jumped nimbly to the sand.

"Brave boy, Richard," he cried.  "Your mother and I looked out from
yonder bend between the islands, knowing that our son would be awaiting
us.  Tell me now, how have you fared during our absence?"

The boy put out his lean arms, already tight with muscle, to greet his
mother.

"I have been hunting by the moon," he answered.  "Last night I shot a
deer, and to-day have cut it up.  A portion of the meat is cooking now."

The soldier of fortune reached an arm round the boy's shoulders and
drew him close.  "You are a man, my Richard.  You shall never know what
it is to lack strength."

Night settled down.  The lord of the isles left the cave, and, seating
himself upon a bank, smoked a long pipe, which he had received as a
gift from Shuswap, chief of the Cayugas, with whom he had allied
himself by marriage.  Silently he drew the smoke through the painted
stem, then handed the pipe to his wife, and she smoked and passed the
quaint object to her son, who smoked also with a strange expression of
sternness upon his child's features.

"Was the meat good, father?" he asked, as he handed back the pipe.

"Somewhat too fresh, my son," the man answered.

"Was the deer well shot?"

"It was well done, Richard."

"It is not easy to shoot straight in the moonlight," the boy said.
"But I shot no more than once.  My arrow went true to the side of the
neck, and Blood followed and pulled the creature down."

The great hound looked up with open mouth, and heavily flapped his tail.

The boy spoke both English and Cayuga, the former more perfectly than
the latter.  His father and mother spoke both languages, each having
taught the other the words of a strange tongue.  The woman was tall, of
a type which was soon to grow extinct, her features as regular as those
of a Greek statue, her eyes and hair a deep black, her skin a trifle
darker than fawn-colour.  Like all the proud daughters of the Iroquois,
she knew well how to handle the axe and bow.  Among her own people, in
the days of maidenhood, her name had been Tuschota; but by her English
husband she was called Mary.

He, the lord of the isles, was almost mean in stature, with a lean,
careworn face marked with decisive lines of character, grey-eyed and
thin-lipped.  His body was clad in a much mended suit of faded red, an
old hat partly covered by a broken feather, with moccasins and leggings
of his wife's make.  A short sword swung behind him by a rough belt of
buckskin, and a hunting-knife, the blade hiding in a beaded sheath,
hung closely to his right hip.  It was hard to tell his age; he had the
eager face of youth under the bleached hair of middle-age.  His wife
and only child called him Thomas or Father, as did the neighbouring
Indians of the allied Iroquois tribes; but none of them knew him by any
other name, except that of Gitsa, the sun, or, as they intended to
convey, "The strong one who sometimes covers his face."

"Father," young Richard exclaimed nervously, "shall you go away
to-night?"

"Be silent, child," said the mother.  "It is not for the young to know
the father's will."

"Nay, Mary," said the grave man.  "I love the lad's spirit.  Let him
speak his mind."

Richard came nearer and put out his hand, a flush upon his brow.  He
patted the hound's back, its head, handled the frayed hem of his
father's cloak, and then his brown fingers passed on to caress the hilt
of the sword upon which his eyes had been fixed while his hand wandered.

"Father," he exclaimed, in a burst of boyish passion, "I want to wear a
sword."

The man's grey eyes kindled as he heard this strong boy speak.  Child
as he was in years, the father's spirit was in him, and the father
rejoiced.

"What would you do with a sword?" he said, frowning.  "Would you cut
your bread, or make kindling wood for the fire?  Have you not your bow
and arrows?"

"I can bring you down the bird flying, or the beast running.  I can
shoot you the salmon in the water.  Now I would learn the sword, that I
may go out with you, and fight with you, and--and protect you, my
father."

The man did not smile; but he frowned no more.

"Son," he said, in tones that were still severe, "you are yet over
young to join the brotherhood of the sword.  The same is a mighty
weapon, never a servant, but rather a tyrant, who shall destroy his
wearer in the end.  Know you that the Master of the world said once,
'All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword'?  Even as
the tongue is the sword, an unruly member which no man can restrain.
It answers an enemy without thought, even as the tongue throws back an
angry word.  It passes a death sentence lightly, even as the tongue
curses an enemy's soul.  It strikes a vulnerable spot in one mad
moment; and when the passion sinks, then the hand fails, and the eye
shall close for shame.  Only the sword changes not, remaining cold to
the eye, ready to the hand, and responsive to the first evil thought in
the heart.  You shall wear the sword some day, my son.  Be content till
then."

"I want to fight Frenchmen," the boy muttered.  "Father, let me draw
your sword.  Let me see it flash in the moon.  Let me feel its point."

The father's hand closed upon that of the boy, pressing the little palm
strongly against the hilt.  "Do not draw that sword, child," he said.
"The virgin hand should hold a virgin blade."

He rose suddenly and disappeared along the white causeway.  The mother
and son were alone on the knoll, the black pines torn by the wind
behind, the spray flying in front.  The mother put out her well-shaped
arm to the smouldering pipe, and drew at the mouthpiece, watching the
excited boy over the triangular bowl.  She spoke in the liquid language
of the Cayugas, "Remember that you are very young, my son."

Richard turned passionately, and fanned away the tobacco smoke which
wreathed itself between their eyes.

"I have lived fifteen years.  I am strong.  See these arms!  See how
long they are, and mark how the muscle swells when I lift my hand.  I
am weary of killing fish and birds and beasts.  I would kill men."

"You would be a man of blood, son?"

"Even as my father.  He has taught me to hunt.  But when he goes down
to the great river he leaves me here.  You he often takes; but I am
left.  He goes down to fight.  I have watched him when he cleans his
sword.  There is blood upon his sword.  It is the blood of men."

"With whom would you fight?" said the mother, her voice reflecting the
boy's passion.

"With the savage Algonquins in the far-away lands, the enemies of the
Iroquois.  And with the Frenchmen whom my father hates."

More the boy would have said, but at that moment the lord of the place
returned with a sheathed sword and a velvet belt.  The sword, a short
blade like that which he himself wore, as slight almost as a whip, he
tested on the ground, and in his stern manner pointed out a spot upon
the summit of the knoll where the moonlight played free from shadow,
saying, "Stand there."

The boy obeyed, stretching out an expectant hand.

His father gave him the virgin sword, fixing him with his stern eye,
and suddenly whipped out his own blade, and exclaimed, in a voice which
was meant to strike terror into the child's heart, "On guard!"

The boy did not wince, but threw up his point like an old soldier, and
his face became wild when along his right arm there thrilled for the
first time an indescribable strength and joy as the two blades met.

By instinct he caught the point, and parried the edge.  By instinct he
lunged at the vital spots, stepping forward, darting aside, falling
back, never resting upon the wrong foot nor misjudging the distance.
His father, who tested him so severely, smiled despite himself, and
Richard saw the smile, and, confident that he could pass his father's
guard, stepped out and took up the attack in a reckless endeavour to
inflict a wound upon his teacher's arm.

The stern soldier of fortune played with the boy under the rushing
north wind and the swaying light of the moon, while the mother stood
near on the slope of the knoll, her eyes flashing, her nostrils
distended, her bosom heaving with the passion of the sword-play.  She
noted how nobly the boy responded to his blood--the enduring blood of
the high-bred Cayuga mingled with the fighting strain of the
Englishman.  She watched the sureness of his hand, the boldness of his
eye.  She saw how readily the use of the sword came to him, and once
she sighed, because her husband had made her Christian, and she
remembered the warning of the unseen God which her lord had lately
repeated, "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

A cry broke from her lips.  Her husband's sword flashed suddenly across
her vision, drew back, lowered, and fell like the falcon which had made
its blow, and the point sprinkled a few drops of blood upon the
bleached grass.

"Thomas," she exclaimed in her native tongue, "why have you wounded
your son?"

"It is his baptism to the sword," her husband answered.

Maddened, not by the pain in his shoulder, which indeed he scarcely
felt, nor by the sight of his blood flicked contemptuously at his feet,
but at the indignity of the wound, the boy rushed at his father, and
hit at him blindly as with a stick; and when the master caught and held
him, and by the act reminded him that he was yet a child, he began to
sob violently with rage.

"You shall pay," he flamed.  "I will have your blood for mine.  I will
fight you again.  I will kill you.  I will----"

"Peace, child," interrupted his mother.  "He is your father."

"Take him and see to him, Mary.  I did but prick his shoulder," said
the father.  "So fiercely did he press upon me that I feared he might
throw himself upon my point.  The lesson shall teach him prudence."

"I am dishonoured--wounded," moaned Richard.

The father opened his doublet and displayed his chest, which upon both
sides was marred by many a scar.  Richard beheld, and blinked away his
angry tears, as the passion departed from him.

"Must I too be wounded before I am a soldier?" he said.

"Ay, a hundred times," his father answered; and the boy turned away
then with his former look of pride, and permitted his mother to wash
and bandage the slight wound upon his shoulder.

Soon they came out together to the knoll where the silent man sat with
the north wind roaring into his ears the song of battle.  He looked up
when they were near, and called, "Richard!"

The boy came, subdued and tired, and stood before his father.

"Kneel."

The boy obeyed.  The lord of the isles fastened the velvet sword-belt
to his son's waist, secured the coveted sword in its place, then stood,
and drew out his own well-tested blade.

With it he struck the boy smartly upon the shoulder exactly over the
wound, smiling when the child compressed his lips fiercely but refused
to wince, and loudly called:

"Arise, Sir Richard!"




CHAPTER IV.

MAKERS OF EMPIRE.

As the days passed, and Van Vuren's attitude of diffident friendliness
remained unaltered, Roussilac's suspicions began to leave him; and even
La Salle modified his former opinions when he again walked abroad and
discovered that out of the seventy-five fighting men who made up the
military complement of the Dutch man-of-war, no less than thirty had
been sent out upon a hunting expedition in the western forests.  These,
and other circumstances, tended to impress the minds of the French
officers that their ally was acting in good faith; thus the commandant
relaxed his vigilance, and Van Vuren was permitted to go upon his way
unwatched.  The Dutchman came seldom to the fortress, because he feared
a second meeting with La Salle; but he frequently stole under cover of
night into the forest to the north, where the Cayugas had their camp,
little guessing that these visits were known, not indeed to the French,
but to a company of five Englishmen, who had been thrown upon the coast
to the west of the settlement of Acadie during a storm of the previous
October, and had wintered in a cave among the rugged cliffs some little
distance beyond the falls of Montmorenci, believing themselves to be
the sole representatives of their country in all that land.

These men--the sole survivors of an expedition which had set forth with
the object of establishing a small colony in the north--wasted no time
in repining over their ill-fortune, or considering the hopeless nature
of their position.  They engaged themselves in mastering the topography
of the fortress and ascertaining the strength of its garrison; they
watched the river, and noted the coming and going of each ship; they
made themselves friendly with the Iroquois, and from Shuswap, the chief
of the Cayugas, a man who loved the English, they obtained from time to
time much information of value.  It was one of their number, Jeremiah
Hough the Puritan, who had followed Van Vuren to the Indian camp-fire;
and when he discovered that the Dutchman was indeed faithless to his
allies and was endeavouring to stir up the Iroquois to strike a blow
against the French position, he returned with the tidings to his
comrades, and the little council of five sat for a long night and
discussed this Dutch policy with the cool shrewdness of their race.

As a result of their debate, one of the little band was deputed each
night to lie concealed upon the shore and watch the Dutch ship.  Simon
Penfold, the leader, a spare, grey man of two score years and ten, but
hard and hale as any oak in his home meadows, played spy on the first
night; Jesse Woodfield, a yeoman scarce thirty years of age, did duty
on the second, and handsome young Geoffrey Viner, the boy of the party,
beloved by his comrades for the sake of his long fair hair and comely
face, kept watch on the third.  On the fourth night the task devolved
upon George Flower, a middle-aged, sad-featured man, the captain's
faithful friend since the days of boyhood; and the next night found
stern Hough the Puritan lying among the willows above the shingle, with
his cold eyes fixed upon a single star of light which marked the
position of the Dutch ship.

These five men, who made up the little company of Englishmen venturing
into the French colony, were yeomen of Berks, farmers of the valleys
and fields watered by the Thames, men of good repute, who had been
driven to leave their native shore and seek another home in the wide
new world through the oppression of the agents of the greedy English
king.

The man who had discovered Van Vuren's plans had indeed delayed his
flight too long.  Scarred and lined as were the faces of Flower and
Penfold, their features had at least escaped the terrible mutilation
which had been inflicted upon Hough as an outward and visible sign of
the royal displeasure.  His ears had been cropped close to the skull,
his nostrils slit, his cheeks branded, as a penalty for having stoutly
refused to supply any portion of the necessities of King Charles,
according to the demand of the most honourable Court of Star Chamber.
The strong black hair which spread thickly over the Puritan's face, yet
without hiding the trail of the branding iron and the primings of the
executioner's knife, added a terrible touch to his dehumanised
appearance.

It was on the fifth night after the watch had been appointed that Van
Vuren played for his big stake.  From a safe shelter among the willows,
Hough observed a small fire upon the shore, and two men, one of whom
appeared to be a native, watching beside the flames.  Presently he
heard a voice hailing softly from the darkness which overhung the
river, and soon a black hulk loomed beside the shore.

Hough counted six men as they disembarked one by one, he saw the boat
drawn up, and the beacon fire extinguished.  That fire was still
hissing under the water which had been thrown upon it when the Puritan
crawled out of the thicket of red willow, and stood, leaning forward,
listening attentively.  When the sound of footfalls died away, he
scaled the cliff behind, ran over the flat to the little river of
Montmorenci, which was flecked with foam and shivering as it neared its
long straight plunge, pulled a canoe from beneath the bushes, and shot
across that dangerous passage as though it had been no whit more
formidable than some sluggish reach of his native Thames.  Had he
dropped his paddle, death would have been inevitable; had he allowed
himself to drift beyond a certain point the current would have dragged
him down to the white bar of foam which marked a phosphorescent line
across the darkness beyond.

Plunging again into the forest, he proceeded in the same headlong
fashion, bearing to the right, always descending, until he struck a
path through the interlacing trees, and finally reached rock-land and a
cave cunningly concealed behind a screen of willow.

He whistled softly, and when his signal was answered pushed inward,
drawing away a sheet of canvas which had been stretched across the
entry to imprison more effectually the light.  A fire burnt within, the
smoke escaping from a shaft two hundred feet above; and round this fire
were grouped his four companions, who started up with eager faces when
the Puritan made his entry.

"Good news, I wot," cried old Penfold.  "'Tis spoken already by your
eyes, friend Hough."

"My eyes lie not," the Puritan answered.  "Comrades, the Dutch have
shown their hand.  If we strike at once we shall assuredly kill their
plan, and may perchance seize their leader."

In a few words he disclosed what he had seen.

"They go to hold council with the sachems," said Penfold, adding
thoughtfully, "There will be no light until the dawn."

"Let us lie in wait for them beside their boat," the Puritan advised.

"Nay, let us fall upon them in the forest," cried Wood field.

"Not so," answered the leader.  "A man cannot use his sword for the
bush and the splintered growth from the pines."

"An Iroquois guide will accompany them," said Flower.

"The boat! the boat!" shouted young Viner.  "That is the place."

"Peace, lads," cried Penfold, stroking his beard.  "Let us discuss with
reason.  Why has this Dutch vessel made her way up the river?
Roussilac would tell us that she has come to strengthen the hands of
the French.  Is it so?  I trow not.  It has ever been the policy of the
Dutch to dissemble.  Holland intends to keep the English from this
coast if she may.  Surely she desires also to drive out the French, in
order that she may make herself mistress of the North American land.
She is eager to make colonies, and she knows full well that the
fortress may easily be defended once it be captured."

"She is, then, a privateer," exclaimed Hough.

"Not so.  She is commissioned by the Government of the Netherlands to
seize North America.  The French are only a handful here.  England has
no fleet.  Now is the crafty Dutchman's opportunity.  Look upon this,
my lads."

Penfold pulled a flaming stick from the fire and walked across the
cave.  He stopped where the side sloped as smoothly as a wall, and held
the torch above his head, pointing to a map of the American colonies
traced upon the wall of silica by charcoal.  The design was roughly and
incorrectly made; rivers were placed where mountains should have shown,
and the scale was entirely inaccurate; but politically it was correct.

"See!" cried the leader, passing a finger through Chesapeake Bay, and
laying his hand lovingly upon the province of Virginia.  "There lies
the fairest of England's colonies.  Here, mark you, flows the Potomac,
and here to the north behold the province of Maryland.  What country
lies back in the beyond we do not know, because the Mohawks are masters
there; but pass north along the coast and we reach New England, the
provinces of Connecticut and Massachusetts, with the king's towns of
Boston and Plymouth.  Between lie our enemies."

He passed his fingers across the words written on the wall, "New
Netherlands," while the four men murmured behind.

"Did the Hollanders acquire their colonies in fair fight?" demanded
Penfold, returning to the fire.

He flung down the brand, and as the sparks showered upward he went on,
"I say it was through deceit.  During the glorious reign of our
Elizabeth, of blessed memory, our men of Devon, our Grenville, our
Drake, our Hawkins smoked out the Spaniards, and wrested these colonies
of the new world from the King of Spain in fair fight.  Fair do I say?
Ay, surely one tight English ship was ever a match for three popish
galleons.  But mark you how the jackals followed the lion, even as
travellers from the Indies tell us they follow to take of that which
the lion shall leave.  Where the land was free, where there was no
tyranny of the church to dread, mark you how the Dutch jackals crept
in, to find a home and found a colony under the protection of the
golden lions of England."

"Come, old Simon," broke in Woodfield.  "Enough of talk."

"Ay, ay.  Put out the fire, my lads.  Rub out yon map.  We have a plan
which, with God's help, shall perchance furnish us with better quarters
than this poor hole in the rock."

Young Geoffrey stepped back, spat upon the white wall where the words
"New Netherlands" appeared, and obliterated the Dutch colonies with the
flat of his hand.

"Let the map now stand!" he cried, and the others gathered round the
boy whom they loved, clashing their swords, and taking courage from the
thoughtless prophecy which was in God's good time to be fulfilled.

Then the Englishmen went on their way through the dark night.




CHAPTER V.

DOUBLE DEALING.

The Dutch master had played his game of duplicity with no little skill.
His arrogant attitude towards the head men of the fortress, his
outspoken hatred for the wild north land and its uncivilised
inhabitants, his outward indolence and distaste for fighting, were all
subtle moves towards the object he had in view.  The culminating stroke
of practically disarming his ship by sending out thirty of his best men
upon a hunting expedition was, he considered, a veritable inspiration
of genius.  The plan had indeed succeeded in its purpose of hoodwinking
the French, and Van Vuren was satisfied, because he knew nothing of the
venturers who had discovered his plans and were preparing to strike a
blow against him for the glory of their country and themselves.

Six men were admitted into their leader's confidence, and five of these
only at the last hour.  Everything seemed to favour the enterprise.
The night which had been chosen for the council between Van Vuren and
the headmen of the Iroquois was very dark.  No sound came from the
sleeping fortress; not a light was showing upon the French ship.  The
usual sentries were posted, but the darkness was too impenetrable for
the keenest sight to carry more than a few yards.  Van Vuren stepped to
the side of his ship, listened intently for some minutes, and when the
silence remained unbroken whispered an order, and the five picked men
clambered down a ladder and guided their feet into a boat which rode
alongside.  The master followed, the boat was pushed off, and floating
down stream swung rapidly round the bend.

"To your oars," muttered Van Vuren.

The black water began to trickle gleefully under the bows, the rowers
dropping their blades cautiously and lifting them high to avoid a
splash.  Soon a spark of light broke out upon the shore, at no great
distance from the falls of Montmorenci, where the river of that name
discharges into the mightier stream.  Swinging the tiller round, Van
Vuren aimed the boat towards that light.

Beside the fire awaited them a stout Dutchman, who had lived in New
Netherlands among the Indians on the banks of the Schuylkill and there
had learnt the language, and with him was an Indian squatting upon his
haunches.  The latter was naked to the waist; a round beaver cap came
low over his forehead, and long hair streamed down his cheeks.  His
body shone like polished mahogany as the firelight played across it.
He rose when Van Vuren approached, and remarked upon the exceeding
blackness of the night, and the stout Dutchman answered in the native
tongue, "It is well."

After drawing their boat up the shore and putting out the fire, the men
listened again for any sounds of hostile movements, and when Van Vuren
was reassured as to their safety the party set off along an
imperceptible trail, following their Cayuga guide, who strode rapidly
towards the cover of the forest.

At the end of an hour's march they drew near the camp and perceived the
glow of the council fire.  The boles of the trees became ruddy, and
they smelt the acrid smoke which curled upward in wreaths to find an
outlet through the solid-looking roof of foliage, There was no
vegetation below.  Splintered stumps projected stiffly from the
conifers; sometimes a fallen trunk lay across the way; the peaty ground
was soft with pine needles.  A fox barked monotonously in the distance.
Occasionally a gust of wind passed with a sigh and a gentle straining
at the mast-like firs.

The party stepped into a clearing, and Van Vuren halted nervously,
tightening the sash which secured his doublet at the waist.  Nine men
appeared before him, seated under a protection of skins stretched
tightly across a framework of boughs, the whole forming a lean-to which
might readily be moved, either to break the force of the wind or to
afford shelter from rain.  The men squatted cross-legged, the majority
naked to the waist and shining with fish-oil, a few wrapped in
blankets, the heads of all covered with fur caps adorned with pieces of
white metal or black feathers.  Only one man was painted, and he showed
nothing more than a triangular patch of red upon his forehead, the apex
of the triangle making a line with the bridge of his nose.  This man
was smoking, and did not put down his pipe when the strangers arrived.
The smoking was indeed a compliment, being the symbolic pipe of peace.

The nine were sachems of the great Iroquois tribes who in combination
held the north of the continent: the Cayugas, Oneidas, Mohawks,
Onondagas, and Senacas.  The smoker was Shuswap, headman of the
Cayugas, father of Onawa and Tuschota, and the chief doctor, one who
professed to understand the language of the beasts, and knew how to
hold communion with the dead.  He looked up, drawing the stem of his
pipe from his thin lips, and spoke:

"Do the white men, who come to us from the world where the sun never
shines, speak to us now words of peace or of war?"

Van Vuren moved awkwardly when he saw the grave hairless faces peering
at him through the hot vapour of the fire.  At that moment the fat
sailor from New Netherlands reached the clearing, panting like a dog.
He presently interpreted the question, and his leader answered: "Tell
the chief that we come from a world where the days are long, and where
the same sun that warms this country shines from morn till night."

"That were waste of breath," muttered the seaman, who had none to
spare, and he said instead to the council of nine: "The white chief has
come in peace to seek the aid of the sun's children that he may
overthrow his enemies."

"A people have taken my children to be their servants," said Shuswap.
"That people armed the enemies of my race against me.  Is the white man
friendly with that people?"

"The French of whom the great sachem speaks are my enemies also,"
replied Van Vuren through the interpreter.  "I would drive them from
the land, and dwell here in peace beside my allies the great tribes of
the Iroquois."

The crafty Dutchman reflected that, when the flag of the Netherlands
waved over the heights, it would be easy to hold the Indians in the
forest with a warship upon the St. Lawrence and a few cannon frowning
from the cliff.

"The white man has called us into council," went on Shuswap.  "What
does he ask of us?"

At that the Hollander played his hand boldly.  "I ask you to send your
fighting-men against the French when I give the signal.  I will sink
the provision ship which lies upon the river, while your men sweep over
the heights and capture the fortress.  So shall you be avenged upon
your enemies, the men who armed the Algonquins against you."

"It is well said," answered the council of nine.

"What signal will you give, that we may know when to make our attack?"
said Shuswap.

"A raft of fire floating down the river."

The headman removed his eyes from the Dutchman and turned to consult
his colleagues.  They conferred for some minutes, without passion,
without animation, apparently with no feeling of interest.  Their faces
were set, and they spoke with only faint motions of their lips.

"We will bring our children," said the old sachem at last.  "When the
fire is seen along the Father of Waters we shall make ourselves ready."

He bent forward, raised a short stick from the centre of the council
fire, and held it out in his brown fingers, then dashed the brand
suddenly upon the ground, and dreamily watched the upward flight of
sparks.

"So let our enemies fly before us," he muttered.

"The sparks fly outward," said the sachem of the Oneidas.

"The Frenchmen shall not be able to stand before the children of the
sun," they muttered with one voice.

The pipe was passed round with terrible solemnity, every Indian and
Dutchman drawing once at the stem and handing it to his neighbour, and
then the Hollanders left the clearing to return, well satisfied with
their night's work.

It wanted yet three hours to the first breaking of the dawn, and the
night was as dark as ever when the seven men came out upon the rocks,
where they could hear the faint whisper of the river.  There the Indian
guide left them, and the Dutchmen, flushed with success, laughed and
talked loudly, knowing that they were separated from the hearing of the
French settlement by more than a mile of rock and bush.  Advancing in
single file, they came to the thicket of willow beside which they had
left their boat.

"Is all well?" called Van Vuren, who walked at the end of the line.

As he spoke there fell a storm out of the night; a thunder of voices;
the lightning of flashing swords; a rush of dark bodies around the
boat.  In the thick darkness all became confusion on the side of the
attacked.

"English!" shouted Van Vuren; and, as the long body of the Puritan
descended upon him, the master turned and fled, without honour, but
with a whole skin.  Only the stout seaman shared his leader's privilege
of a run for his life, but him the far-striding legs of Hough pursued,
covering two feet to the Dutchman's one.  The wretch sweated and
groaned as he flung out his aching legs, his great body heaving and
staggering as cold as ice.  He swore and prayed to God in one breath.
He promised a life of service to the Deity, a treasure in the Indies to
the pursuer; but prayer and promise availed him little.  The mutilated
man pressed upon him, and it was only the almost tangible darkness
which prolonged his life for a few more agonised seconds.  Then Hough
bounded within reach, lunged fairly, pressing home when he felt flesh,
and the fat Dutchman emitted a violent yell, and his big carcase rolled
upon the rocks, his head settled, his mouth grinned spasmodically, his
limbs twitched, and then he lay at ease, staring more blindly than ever
into the night.  Out of the six conspirators who had set forth that
night, Van Vuren was the only man to escape with his life.

"Cast me these bodies into the river," said Penfold, wiping his sword.
"But, stay.  It were a pity to waste so much good clothing.  Strip them
first, lads.  Naked they came into the world, and naked let them go
out."

The bodies were denuded of their clothes and weapons.  Five splashes
shivered the face of the river, and then the Englishmen laid hands upon
the boat and drew her down to the water.  But an idea had occurred to
Penfold, and he called a halt.

"We have the current to row against, and the night may break before we
reach the ship," he said.  "Let us disguise ourselves, so that French
and Dutch alike may regard us as friends in the dimness of the morning.
Here are five suits of Dutch clothing.  There are five of us.  We shall
fight the easier in such loose-fitting trunks."

"Methinks they that fear the Lord have no need to adopt a cunning
device," protested the Puritan.

"What know we about the ways of the Lord?" said his leader.  "Does the
Lord grant the victory to him who runs?  Does He not rather send him a
sword into his coward's back?  The Lord, I tell you, helps that man who
is the most subtle in devising schemes through which he may overthrow
his enemies.  A murrain on these garments!  I shall be as a child when
he has put on his father's trappings for the bravery of the show."

Already a grey-dark mist spread along the river where the night clouds
were dissolving at the first light touch of the fingers of the day.
The adventurers had but an hour for their project before the coming of
the first light.




CHAPTER VI.

THE INTRODUCTION TO A FIGHT.

Upon the fore-deck of the Dutch ship two sailors were chatting idly
beside a lantern's shaded light.  They had tramped up and down,
performing their duty in a listless fashion, until the general silence
had convinced them that the officer in charge was asleep below.  The
determination to take their ease, which they thereupon arrived at,
became strengthened by their belief that the vessel could not have been
safer had she been at anchor-hold in the Zuyder Zee.

"Yon French ship has no sentries, I warrant," said Jan Hoevenden, the
younger of the two.  "What use, when a man may hardly see his hand when
'tis held in front of him?  Your Indian does not attack by water, as
Roussilac well knows.  Neither shall he attack in such a darkness,
unless hard put to it."

"'Tis a scheme of the master to deprive us of our hard-earned sleep,"
grumbled James Oog.  "Come, comrade, let us rest here and smoke.  Here
is a parcel of tobacco which I dried yesterday in the sun."

The two sailors filled their pipes, lighted the tobacco at the poop
lantern, and settled themselves aft speedily to forget their
responsibilities.  There was not a sound, except the hum of flies and
the swirl of the river.  There was nothing to be seen, beyond the
gloomy masts and spectral rigging.  The atmosphere remained still and
close.

"This is but a poor country, Jan," observed the older man, after a few
contented puffs at his huge pipe.  "There be no treasure of gold or
silver buried here."

"Nought but forest and rock, with a biting wind o' nights," replied
Hoevenden.  "'Tis a cold climate.  The Indians say this river is thick
with ice for a full half of the year."

"I wish for none of that.  Give me the south.  Hast ever been in
Florida?"

"Nay.  Is that land as fruitful as men say?"

"It knows no winter, and even in the midst of the year the heat is
never so great that a man may not endure to work.  The soil is so rich
that grain dropped upon the ground shall spring into harvest in a
month.  Sugar and fruit grow there, and much timber for building.
There is also game for the pot, and furs for a man's back."

"There are pestilent beasts, they tell me," Hoevenden grumbled.

"Well, man, there was never a paradise without serpents.  True there
are mighty reptiles, twenty feet in length, within the rivers, and
monstrous scorpions upon land.  But what of it?  There are perils upon
every shore.  A man may sit out at night under a big moon, beside trees
covered with white or pink blooms, every bloom as great as his head and
smelling like wine, and he may listen to the Tritons singing as they
splash through the sea, and watch the mermaidens--passing fair they say
who have seen them--lying upon the rocks, wringing salt water from
their hair.  'Tis a wondrous shore.  I would rather own an acre of it
than be master of all this country of cold forest where there is
neither fruit nor flower."

"The fog arises yonder," said Hoevenden, pointing down the river.

The grey mass which he indicated ascended rapidly and drenched the deck
with dew.  There was as yet no light, but a heavy shadow had taken the
place of the intense blackness, and the river was visible as it carried
its current to the gulf.  The two men rose suddenly, and hid their
pipes when they heard the rattle of oars and splash of water.

"Shall be found at our duty," said Oog, with a husky laugh, and his
fellow-seaman chuckled with him.

A boat was making rapid progress against the stream, Penfold, with an
eye upon the fog and his right hand on the tiller, encouraging the
rowers.  The muscles sprang out from their arms, the sweat flowed from
their faces, despite the rawness of the air.  Hough's mutilated
countenance throbbed terribly beneath his efforts.  The ship started
suddenly out of the mist, and Penfold called softly, "Easy, lads.
Spare yourselves now, for we have soon to fight."  But immediately the
men stopped rowing, the current dragged the boat down.

"The use of the sword will be as child's play after pulling against
this stream," gasped Hough.

Again the men bent their backs, and the boat sullenly made way.  Behind
them the morning was breaking rapidly, the fog gathered in whiter
folds, and some flickering bars of grey light crossed the track of the
river.

"They must not see our faces nor hear us speak," Penfold muttered.
Then he whispered sharply, "Heaven be thanked!  A ladder hangs at her
stern."

He drew the borrowed plume over his eyes, and lowered his head because
he was facing the ship.  His comrades gave way, driving the heavy boat
upward with great strokes of the clumsy oars, until Penfold muttered
softly, "Easy now."

The two sentries were looking down from above; but they perceived
nothing of a suspicious nature, chiefly because they had no cause to
fear the coming of the enemy.

Young Viner was the first to leave the boat, but Penfold was hard after
him.  They scrambled up the ladder, while the others secured the boat
to the steps.

"Five men!" exclaimed Hoevenden, peering through the perplexing light.
"Where is the sixth?  Masters, where is the commander?"

"Here!" muttered an English voice, and the sentry fell forward with
Penfold's sword through him.  Oog opened his mouth to cry "Treachery!"
but all the sound that issued therefrom was a death gasp, as Viner
finished his career with a pretty stroke which effectually deprived the
Dutchman of his hoped-for heritage in the south.

"A fair beginning," said Penfold, peering forward at the big cabins
which gave the ship a curiously humped shape.  "Now to smoke out the
hornets.  If we are mastered by numbers, we may yet save ourselves by
swimming to the shore.  All silent yet.  But see--a gun!"

He rammed his sword up the muzzle-breach.  "'Tis loaded.  Fetch me
yonder lantern."

Hough brought the lantern from the poop; but hardly had he done so when
a head came out from one of the cabin windows, and a pair of frightened
eyes swept their faces.  In a moment, as it seemed, the ship was in an
uproar.

"Now may God deafen the Frenchmen," prayed Penfold, as he swung the
brass gun round and pointed its muzzle at the cabin door.

Viner and Woodfield were fastening down the hatches, while Hough ran
forward, taking his life in his hands, and severed the cable.  The ship
quivered, shook herself like a dog aroused from sleep, and very slowly
answered the downward pull of the stream.

But before the Puritan could return the cabin door burst open and the
enemy swarmed forth.  Hough dropped the first in his shirt, parried a
blow from the second, turned and ran back, while old Penfold opened the
lantern and brought the flame down to the portfire.

There was light now over the St. Lawrence under masses of wet cloud.
An Indian canoe was flying over the water like a bird, urged by two
pair of arms paddling furiously.  She caught the floating ship, and as
she made fast to the side of the steps the gun roared overhead, and
after it an English cheer shook the mist.

"Keep to my side," said the man in the canoe.  "Forget not that pass
under the hilt I taught you."

Having thus spoken he bounded up the ladder.




CHAPTER VII.

THE FIGHT.

Although the majority of the thirty-six Dutchmen left aboard had been
secured below hatches, those on deck were sufficient to make the odds
heavy against the Englishmen.  The unanticipated arrival of the lord of
the isles and his son--who had been returning from their hunting ground
higher up the river, when their ears were startled through the morning
mist by the sound of English voices--brought up the attacking strength
to the fortunate number of seven; but the new-comers were not even
observed by the five adventurers during the excitement of the opening
stage of that struggle in the fog.

That incautious cheer, which followed the noise of the gun, was defiant
rather than triumphant.  In spite of Penfold's careful aim the ball had
merely crashed across deck and plunged through the cabin windows.  A
couple of hurriedly aimed shots came back in angry reply, but one
passed high, the other low, resulting in a wrecked plank in the deck
and the loss of a portion of rigging.  The bark of seventeenth-century
cannon was far more formidable than its bite.

"Have at them, my lads.  Drive them over the side," thundered Penfold;
and he rushed forward to clear the deck at the head of his gallant few.

Before the conflicting parties could meet, three Dutchmen, deceived by
the tumultuous English cheer, had gone over the side to swim for shore.
These men believed that at least a boatload of armed men had taken them
by surprise, and they but obeyed the instinct which in certain
temperaments recommends prudence in the form of flight.

"We stand too close together," rang out Penfold's voice.  "Friend
Woodfield, I had your elbow twice into my side.  Separate a little, but
let us keep in line."

"One rush forward--a strong rush to the cabins," shouted Hough.  The
five swords darted through the fog, and every point came back reddened.

Then they broke into a run, hoping thus to sweep the deck, but their
weakness had by this time become evident to the defenders, who in their
turn pressed forward, conquering by sheer weight of numbers.  Each of
the adventurers sought shelter for his back, a mast or bulwark, and
each was driven to fight independently.  Three men rushed upon Penfold
and pressed him sore.  The Englishman cut at the head of the foremost,
but while his arm was uplifted the others took the advantage offered
and ran in under his guard.  Penfold drew his dagger and beat at them
with his left hand.  The second Dutchman scratched him deeply along the
side.  The third caught and held his left wrist, and shortened his
rapier to run the Englishman through the heart.  Penfold saw death
before him, but only called grimly, "Fair play, ye dogs, fair play!"

The sword was dashed from his hand.  He pressed back to avoid the
plunge of the shortened blade, but the Hollanders had him at their
mercy.  Penfold prepared to make a last effort to break aside, when the
foe who threatened him started rigid with a gasp of pain, and the
leader of the adventurers saw the point of a sword dart fearfully from
the Dutchman's chest.  Then the man fell forward spitted from behind,
and with him another of the soldiers, while the third of Penfold's
assailants splashed heavily into the St. Lawrence.

The man who had saved the leader's life went on his way fighting with
magnificent confidence in the strength of his right arm, and beside him
went the boy, fighting with all his father's fervour, his brown face
pale with passion, his little brown hands already oozing blood, and his
short sword from hilt to point all bloody too.

"Angels or devils," gasped Flower, who was bleeding heavily from a
wound in the thigh, "they fight upon our side."

"At them again," cried Woodfield.  "After the brave stranger."

"He takes too much upon him.  I am leader here," grumbled old Penfold
unthankfully.

The valour of the stranger turned the scale.  None of the Dutch could
stand before that terrible blade.  They gave way, were hunted back to
the cabins, and there brought to bay.

"Yield you, sirs!" called Penfold.

Seeing that they had done sufficient for honour, the men yielded, gave
up their weapons, and sought permission to finish their dressing.
Before this request could be granted, a deep voice exclaimed:

"You grow careless, my masters.  Know you not that a bird cannot fly
unless she has wings to carry her?"

It was the stranger who issued this caution as he pointed with his
sword over the stern.

The ship had drifted some eighty yards from her moorings, her keel
grating more than once upon a drift of mud.  She had remained close to
the bank, out of reach of the strong central current, and now lay
almost motionless, because she had reached the slack water where the
river commenced its eastward bend.  Behind her lay the fortress,
already vested in the golden light of the morning.  Between, where the
white mist was stealing upward, came sailing a great hulk, and above
the vapour could be seen the flag of France crushing its golden lilies
against the topmast.  At intervals came the indistinct murmur of
voices, the flash of hurried sparks dropped upon touchwood, the rattle
of cannon balls, the ramming home of charges down slim-waisted guns.

"Fool that I am!" exclaimed Penfold.  "Fool and forgetful!  Up the
rigging, my lads, and set the mainsail.  What breeze there is blows
down the river.  Drive me yonder fellows up, George Flower.  Do you see
that they set all sails, and if they be not ready to obey hurry them
with the sword point."

The sailors were driven into the rigging to plume their ship for the
benefit of a victorious enemy.  The canvas flapped out, the ship veered
towards midstream, and, instantly responding to wind and current,
floated to the left of the island, with the Frenchman scarce a hundred
yards from her stern.

A voice came rolling out of the mist, the voice of D'Archand.  "Are you
attacked by Indians?" he shouted.  The master had undoubtedly made out
the Indian canoe floated beside the steps.

"Let any man answer at his peril," said Penfold, glaring round upon the
unarmed Dutch.

"Do we fear the French?" demanded Viner hotly.  "Here are five--nay,
seven--good Englishmen, for surely our stout allies here have fought as
only English can----"

"There are a hundred men upon yonder ship," interrupted the leader,
"men equipped with the newest weapons of Europe.  It were madness to
divulge our names and nation.  Sir," he went on, turning to the
stranger, "we are much indebted to you.  Sir, you have fought like a
brave man, and have helped us to overcome our enemies.  What counsel do
you give?"

"Answer Roussilac that Indians have come aboard, but that the crew are
capable of defending themselves, if you will," the stranger replied.
"So may you avoid his fire.  Or with your pleasure I will undertake to
answer the master myself, even as an Englishman should always answer a
Frenchman."

"And how is that?" demanded Penfold.

The stranger indicated the brilliant flag, flapping in the sunshine
like a wounded bird trying to fly but falling back.  "By defying him so
long as that emblem flies," he said.

Between heavy lines of mist, waved like the bar nebuly upon the shield
of the woolcombers, the black stem and white deck of the enemy had
become partly visible.  Heads of watchers were peering over her side,
their bodies hidden, their faces barely above the fog line.  Before the
cabins in front of the poop a canopy fluttered; under it a table, and
upon the table six great golden poppies lifted their heads, their
ragged petals flickering under the breeze.  The Englishmen saw the bare
head and richly caparisoned shoulders of a tall priest, who swayed
monotonously from side to side, and muttered Latin in a deep voice.
The table was an altar, the poppies were candles, and the priest was La
Salle reciting the inevitable morning Mass.

The better-built Dutch vessel, being easily capable of sailing a knot
and a half to the Frenchman's one, drew away, her main and fore sheets
swelling till they were round as the belly of some comfortable merchant
of Eastcheap who had profited by a successful venture upon the Spanish
Main.  Very soon the voice of the militant priest became like the
murmur of an overhead insect.

"Now by my soul!" cried Hough, with a quivering of his slit nostrils.
"It were an everlasting disgrace to Christian men to stand thus idle
and watch a priest of Baal offering sacrifice.  Bid us run out the
guns, captain, and drop a good Protestant cannon ball amid yonder
catholic juggling.  We have fought for our country this day.  Let us
now commit ourselves to the Lord's work, and snuff out yonder stinking
candles, and end these popish blasphemies."

Penfold made no sign of hearing this appeal.  He said merely, "They
cram on yet more sail.  But they shall not come up to us unless we are
brought upon a bar, and even so they cannot pass us, because the water
becomes narrow beyond.  Where is friend Woodfield?"

"Guarding the prisoners at the door of the cabin and keeping an eye
that they do not arm themselves."

"Listen to the men below," said Flower.  "Our caged birds become weary
of confinement, and beat their wings to escape."

Hough and the lord of the isles held their eyes upon the Frenchman, who
was now one hundred and fifty yards away, and almost clear of vapour.
When they could see that the guns had been unshipped and were pointing
over the bows, neither man was able altogether to suppress his feelings.

"The curse of God shall surely fall upon us," cried the Puritan
furiously.  "When summoned to work in His vineyard we turn a deaf ear
to the call.  Did evil come to me when I dragged with mine own hands
from the reformed communion table of our parish church at Dorchester a
Jesuit in disguise, and flung the dog into our little river Thame there
to repent him of his former and latter sins?"

"Peace, friend," said old Penfold.  "Here is not England, nor stand we
on English territory.  Let yonder papists worship their saints and
idols to their own decay.  We are but few in number, though valiant in
spirit, and with every man a wound to show.  Remember also that this
ship is not yet our prize."

"Croaker," muttered Hough disdainfully.

"Say rather a man to whom age has brought sound judgment," returned
Penfold, unmoved.

"It is my turn," said the deep voice of the unknown.  "Sir Captain, I
have a favour to beg.  There is a gun yonder on which I have set my
eye, a brass gun of some twenty pounds weight, loaded with ball.  If it
displease you not, I will discharge that gun from the aftmost deck in
such a manner that it shall harm no man.  Sir Captain, I have some
small experience in aiming the gun."

Penfold set his rugged face towards his questioner.

"Good sir," he said, "you are English among Englishmen.  We are plain
countrymen of the royal county of Berks, village yeomen of small
degree, who have beaten our plowshares into swords; but you, I may
believe, judging from your speech, are somewhat higher.  Tell us, if
you will, your name."

"My name is my own, my sword the king's, my life belongs to my
country," said the stranger.  "Enough to know that I am a man of Kent.
If now I have answered you, sir, I beg of you to answer me."

"We should but reveal ourselves."

"Every minute widens yon strip of water between ourselves and the
pursuer.  She is sailing her fastest, and each minute sends us more of
the wind which she has been taking from us.  This breeze may endure for
another hour, by which time we shall have reached the chasm which is
called Tadousac.  Sixteen years have I dwelt upon this river, good
master, both in winter and summer, and no servant of King Louis, nor
Indian of the forest, knows its waters better than I."

Penfold turned to the two associates supporting him.  "What answer
shall I give?" he asked.

"Consent," said fanatic and youth together; and Penfold gave consent
against his better judgment.

Unaided, the stranger carried the short gun up the steps, rested it in
position upon its crutch on the sloping deck, and arranged the priming,
while the stern boy at his bidding produced knife and flint.  The men
below awaited results with a certain curiosity, looking for little more
than an explosion of powder, and the hurling of a defiant missile
harmlessly into space.

It might have been the excellence of the aim, it might have been the
working of Providence, more probably it was sheer commonplace English
luck; but, when the quaint little weapon had howled, kicked viciously,
and rolled over, there came the dull crash of lead with wood, a shower
of tough splinters, and--most glorious sight for the adventurers'
eyes--the top of the French mainmast, carrying the great white and gold
flag, which had been blessed by a bishop upon the high altar of Notre
Dame in Paris, sprang into the air like a pennoned lance, described a
half circle, and plunged to deck, piercing the canopy as though it had
been paper, missing the ministrant by inches only, scattering the
candlesticks and breaking the candles before the eyes of the
scandalised soldiers, who were concluding their devotions to the "_Ite
missa est_" of the priest.

A great cheer ascended from the Dutch ship, making the cold, pine-clad
hills echo and ring.  Hough forgot his sternness, and laughed aloud as
he clasped the gunner's hand.  Old Penfold smiled grimly, with more
inward jubilation than he cared to show.

"Now plume her, lads, and let us fly," he shouted.  "Steer her around
yonder bend in safety, and we may laugh at her cannon."

"The prisoners, captain!  We cannot both fight the ship and hold guard
over them."

"To the river with them," said Hough.  "Let them swim ashore."

"There may be some who cannot swim."

"What better chance shall they have of learning?  My father cast me
into the Thames when I was but a whipster, and said, 'Sink or swim, my
lad.'  And I thought it well to swim."

Protesting, struggling, swearing in an unknown tongue, the prisoners
were brought forth from the cabins and hurried over the side, the
laggards helped by a cuff or kick at starting.  The turgid river
splashed with Dutchmen, like a school of porpoises, making with what
speed they could--for the water was exceedingly cold--towards the
rock-bound shore.

Great was the confusion upon the Frenchman when she became so notably
disgraced, but presently D'Archand restored a semblance of order, and
the men trailed off to their duties, probably not a little afraid at
discovering that the ever-dreaded English, whose appearance north of
far-distant Plymouth had become a familiar nightmare, were aboard their
supposed Dutch ally.  La Salle, who had immediately rushed into his
cabin and there divested himself of his ecclesiastical finery, speedily
reappeared in secular costume with his redoubtable sword naked in his
hand.  The abbe could swear as heartily as any soldier when put to it,
which fact he proved beyond lawyers' arguments then and there.

"Body of St. Denis!" he cried.  "See to your priming, knaves.  Ah,
hurry, young imp of the pit," kicking a scrambling powder-boy as he
shouted.  "By St. Louis, our Lady, and the Cardinal!  This is a Dutch
word, a Dutch troth, a Dutch alliance.  We shall harry the traitors who
have leagued themselves with our enemies, unless their master, Satan,
lends them wings to carry them to the uttermost parts of the earth.  We
shall hang them speedily to the rigging, if the saints be favourable.
Fire, rogues!  See you not that she is slipping away from us?  Ah, for
a sand bank, or sunken rock, to catch her as she runs!  Mark you now,
when I throw a curse over them, how they shall be brought down in their
pride."

Despite the malediction of Holy Church, the trim Dutchman swept on
nearly a quarter of a mile ahead.  Sailors manned the rigging, and
crammed on as much additional sail as the masts would bear; the
dishonoured flag was replaced; Roussilac paced the main deck, pale with
rage, his fingers clasping and unclasping his sword-hilt.  D'Archand
hurried to and fro, issuing orders with typical French rapidity.

A jet of smoke broke over her bows, and a ball threw up a spout of
water in the wake of the fleeing vessel.

"A most courteous and inoffensive messenger," quoth Flower, bowing to
the enemy.  "Captain, shall we not make a suitable reply?"

"I fear me powder and ball are out of reach," said the captain.  "The
noisy hornets below guard the magazine.  Would that we had a flag to
hoist over us, though it were nothing more comprehensible to our foes
than the five heads of county Berks."

Another gun exploded, and after it another, and so they continued
ringing their wild music, the balls falling astern for the most part,
though more than one whizzed through the rigging, yet without doing
more damage than cutting a rope.

"Take her wide round yonder point, master helmsman," cried the
stranger.  "There lies a mud-bank stretching under the water well-nigh
to mid-stream.  Mark you the place where it ceases by the ripple across
the river?  Steer your passage to the left of that ripple, and all
shall go well."

"Methinks the wind blows more keenly," said Woodfield.

"There is coming upon us that wind which the Indians call the life of
the day, a breath of storm from the west which endures but a few
moments, blowing away the vapours of early morn and the last clouds of
night," said the man of Kent.  "We may be sure of that wind at this
season of the year.  After it follows calm, and the sun grows hot.
Haul down the lower main-sail, Sir Leader.  The heavy mist upon yonder
hills tells us that the wind shall blow full strength this morning."

Even as he spoke a ball from the enemy's bows roared overhead, and
snatched away a portion of the sail he indicated.  The loose canvas
began already to flap and the flying ropes to whistle in the wind.

"Let it remain so," said the Kentishman.  "We have no need to take in
our sail since they have saved us the work.  Didst see how she
staggered then?  She shall never carry all that weight of canvas
through the life of the day, and the wind bears more heavily on her
than upon us.  Ah, she gains!"

It was as he had said.  The unwieldy vessel fell into the breath of the
wind, and, righting herself after a sudden lurch, settled down into the
water, ploughing a deep white furrow, every mast bending and every rope
straining, every inch of canvas bellying mightily.

The Dutchman came out to avoid the mud flat.  She began to make the
bend, and her helmsman already saw the wide reach of river beyond, when
a terrible shout ascended from the men who were caged between decks.
At the same moment a pungent odour tainted the free air, and a thin
blue vapour began to leak from the cracks and joinings of the planks.

The Dutchman was burning internally.  Soon her deck smoked like a dusty
road under wind, and the shouts of the prisoners became terrible to
endure.  The adventurers smelt the choking fumes, saw the curling
vapours, and their faces grew pale with the knowledge that they had to
face a more dangerous foe than the French, knowing well that any moment
a spark or a flame might touch the magazine.

"Unfortunates!" groaned Penfold.  "I had hoped to win this ship, and
with her sail to Virginia, there to gather a crew of mine own people,
and return hither to harry the French."

"To the boats," cried Flower.  "Better be sunk by a cannon ball than
perish like rats in a corn-stack."

The wind rushed down from the westward rocks with a shout.  It smote
the waters of the St. Lawrence, beating them into waves.  It penetrated
the womb of the Dutch vessel, and fanned the smouldering fire into
life.  It plucked at the cordage, fought with the sails, and bent the
masts until they cracked again.  It came in a haze through which the
sun glowed faintly, and behind over the unseen heights the sky cleared
and burst into blue patches, because the passing of the life of the day
was as sudden as its birth.

Down went the mizzenmast of the Frenchman with its crowning weight of
canvas, carrying away the spanker, the shrouds, davits, and quarter
boat; and her sky-sails, which a moment before had raked the breeze so
proudly, spread disabled in the river.  She dragged on with her
wreckage, while men with axes swarmed into the poop to cut away the
dead weight of wood and saturated canvas.  The mainmast curved like a
bow from the main shrouds to the truck, but remained fast until the
haze broke, and the sky became a field azure, from which the sun shone
out in his might.

Flames were now pouring from the doomed ship, and the poop was a mass
of fire.  The Englishmen ran for the boats, into which they flung every
article upon which they could lay their hands: swords and guns, axes,
clothing, provisions, bedding, and even spare sails and ropes.
Everything would serve some useful purpose in their life upon the
shore.  The lord of the isles alone took nothing.  He entered his canoe
with the boy, and before the adventurers quitted the doomed ship they
had reached the shore and entered the cover of the trees, the man
carrying the light canoe beneath his arm.

"Release the prisoners," cried Flower, as he cast his last burden into
the boat.

"Not so," replied the vindictive Hough.  "Let them perish like the men
of Amalek before Israel."

"Nay, we are no cold-blooded murderers," protested Woodfield.
"Unfasten the hatches, and let them save themselves."

"Have they not been delivered into our hands that we may destroy them?"
said Hough.

"Now you would undo the good work, and raise up again a host to be our
destruction in the time to come."

"Let us not argue, lest we be destroyed," said young Viner.  "What says
our captain?"

But old Penfold was lying back in the boat, fainting with exhaustion
and loss of blood, and when Woodfield appealed to him he only murmured
the death sentence of the Dutchmen, "Let Jeremiah Hough command."

"Cast off," said the Puritan.  "Let the enemies of our country perish.
The Lord do so to me and more also if I spare any of the accursed race
who have sworn to sweep England from the seas."

So the boat pushed off, and came after hard rowing to the shore, beside
the mouth of the little river which enters the main stream midway
between Cap Tourmente and the cleft of the Saguenay.  Up this river the
men pulled to find a place for encampment, until the sweet-smelling
pine forest closed behind and hid them from their enemies, whose flag
they had flouted and beaten that day.  While they worked their way
inland a mighty explosion shook the atmosphere, the cones rained from
the overhanging trees, the rock land thrilled, the face of the water
shivered, and the birds flew away with screams.

"I fear me," said Hough, as he ceased his nasal droning of a psalm, "I
fear me that the popish dogs have been given time to rescue the
Hollanders."

True it was that the French had been allowed both time and opportunity
for setting at liberty the wretches in the burning ship, but neither
Roussilac nor any of his captains dared to lead the venture, knowing
that any moment might witness the destruction of the ship.  The master
took in his sails, cast anchor, and waited for the end.

Thus the undertaking of Holland failed, as her treachery deserved.  It
was her one attempt at wresting the fortress from the Cardinal's grip.
And from that day to this no man-of-war from the Netherlands has ever
sailed up the gulf of the St. Lawrence.




CHAPTER VIII.

COUCHICING.

A month went after the failure of the Dutch venture, and the sachems of
the Iroquois still awaited the signal of the raft of fire.  Van Vuren
had entered the fortress that morning which witnessed the loss of his
ship, and there remained at the mercy of the French, spending his days
in making friendly overtures to the commandant, avoiding La Salle--who
still refused to believe that it was not Van Vuren who had been his
cowardly attacker that distant night at the street corner in
Avignon--and anxiously inquiring for news concerning the expedition
which he had sent out to the west.  The Dutchman was being punished for
his treachery by the knowledge that a sword was suspended by an
exceedingly frail thread above his head, for he strongly suspected that
the dwarf Gaudriole was cognisant of his visits to the council fire.
He was therefore afraid to approach the Indians again; but his mind was
yet occupied with its former plot of seizing the fortress with their
aid.

During that month Roussilac had not been idle.  With half his men he
had harried the country to east and west, that he might find and hang
the Englishmen who had dared to occupy his territory and disgrace his
flag.  He did not venture into the forests of the north, because the
Iroquois were masters there.  Once the adventurers came very near to
being taken, but bravery and English luck opened a way for their
escape.  They were, however, compelled to abandon their cave among the
cliffs, and flee for refuge into the district inhabited by the friendly
Cayugas; and there, a few paces from the brink of Couchicing, the Lake
of Many Winds, they built them a hiding-place surrounded by a palisade,
which they ambitiously named New Windsor.  To the north they were
protected by the face of the water, to the south by the primaeval
forest; on the west the Cayugas held the land, on the east the Oneidas,
both tribes well disposed towards the English and bitterly hostile to
the French.

Finding himself again defeated, Roussilac cast about in his mind for a
sounder policy, and finally resolved to adopt Samuel de Champlain's
cunning and stir up the Algonquins anew to attack their hereditary
foes.  Accordingly he despatched Gaudriole with a couple of soldiers to
the north, with a present of guns and ammunition and a message to the
chief Oskelano, praying him to descend straightway to the river, and
view for himself the majesty and power of the representatives of the
King of France.  Oskelano, a treacherous and heartless rogue, snatched
at the gifts, asked greedily for more, and consented to return with the
dwarf to the fortress.

This move on the part of the commandant escaped the knowledge of the
men who were busy in their way spinning the web of England's empire,
fighting for their own existence and for supremacy at one and the same
time.  At their councils figured the lord of the isles--whose
well-hidden shelter in the heart of the region of the lost waters had
never been suspected by the searching party--and his stern young son.
Since that unlooked-for meeting on the deck of the Dutch vessel the
Kentishman had come into frequent contact with the men of Berks, and
their common nationality, cause, and necessities had quickly forged a
stubborn tie between them.  But the geniality of the yeomen never
succeeded in breaking down the reserve of their mysterious colleague.
When asked to recount some portion of his past history he would but
answer brusquely, and when they demanded to know his name he merely
returned his former answer, "I am a man of Kent."

During that month another provision ship, the _St. Wenceslas_ of
Marseilles, had sailed up the St. Lawrence, and so soon as she had made
fast and told the news of the world D'Archand lifted anchor and headed
for home, carrying Roussilac's despatches, and those soldiers and
settlers who, by reason of wounds or sickness, had become unfitted to
fulfil their military obligations.  The French Government had taken
advantage of the dissensions which were rending England apart to send
by the _St. Wenceslas_ more emigrants into the new world--all picked
men, destined by the Government to be established, willing or
unwilling, regardless of soil or natural advantages, upon such
districts as might be considered to need strengthening, there to
survive or to become extinct.  It would be their duty to form, not a
settlement capable of extension, but a military post; and they would be
sustained by supplies brought over from France by warships.  It was a
weak policy, bound by the test of time to fail.  The English motto was
settlement and a friendly attitude towards the natives; that of her
great colonial rival, aggrandisement and the destruction of the
aborigines.

These facts were remembered by the venturers, when they beheld the
coming of the one ship and the departure of the other, and, egotists
though they were, the truth that they could not possibly form a
settlement unaided became at last too obvious to be ignored.  After
repeated deliberations they decided upon a course which was indeed the
only one open to them.  The advice, that one of the party should
attempt to reach the king's loyal town of Boston by overland journey
and there beg for help, proceeded in the first instance from the man of
Kent.  He explained that the province of Massachusetts was well
occupied by Englishmen of every grade--soldiers of fortune as well as
artisans, farmers, and titled scions of great houses; and, he added,
there were ships of war in Boston and Plymouth harbours.  This advice
found favour in the eyes of the others, and they proceeded to draw lots
to decide which one should make the hazard.  The lot fell upon Geoffrey
Viner, the youngest of the party.  His seniors at once held forth
objections, grounded upon his youth and inexperience; but the boy as
stoutly held out for his privilege, until the dissentients gave way.

At noon upon the day which had been selected for the young man's
departure, the lord of the isles appeared at New Windsor to bid the
messenger farewell.  Geoffrey went out with him, and they stood alone
in the shade of a hemlock, facing the lake and a white cascade which
streamed like a bridal veil over the face of the rocks.  After the
Kentishman had imparted what little knowledge he had of the country to
the south, he went on to fix deeply into the mind of his listener the
importance of seeing Lord Baltimore, the Governor of New England,
personally, and of impressing the papist peer strongly with the vital
necessity of sending immediate succour to the north.

"And what if my Lord Baltimore will not hear me, or hearing will not
believe?" asked Geoffrey anxiously.

"Give to him this ring," replied the other, drawing reluctantly from
his left hand a gold circlet set with a stone bearing a coat-of-arms.
"Bid him remember the promise made to this ring's owner one summer
night in a Kentish orchard.  Bid him also recall the words of King
Henry the Sixth upon Southwark Bridge, hard by Saint Mary Overies, to
his ancestor the keeper of the privy seal, and to mine the sheriff of
Kent."

"Think you that our plans shall prosper?" the young man asked.

"Have no doubt.  Believe that already we have succeeded.  Persuade
yourself that the French are driven out of their fastnesses, and the
land from Acadia to Hochelaga gives allegiance to King Charles.  As a
man wills so shall it be.  And yet be cautious."

"Should I not bid them attack Acadia first?  It is but a small colony,
and open to the water they say."

"Nay," said the other.  "Let us fight with our faces to the sea.  How
shall it profit us to drive our enemy inland and disperse them as a
swarm of flies which rises and settles in another spot?  We must drive
them eastward to the sea, where they shall either conquer or die.  I
pray you guard that ring."

As they moved away from the hemlock's shade a canoe swept over the lake
and touched the sand, and two stern-faced Cayugas lifted their paddles,
shaking the water from the blades.  These brought a brace of
land-locked salmon to the beach.  A young woman followed, and after her
an old man, his thick hair adorned with a bunch of feathers.  These
were Shuswap and Onawa, his youngest daughter.

The lord of the isles went forward, and met his native relatives upon
the beach.

"Gitsa," cried the old man.  "We greet you, Gitsa."

"Is it well, Shuswap?"

"It is the time of the wind of life, the good time," the old man
answered.  "The waters are free, and the animals breed in the forest.
Where are the white men of the smooth tongue, Gitsa?  Where are the men
who came to us at the council fire and said to us, 'Your enemy is our
enemy.  Aid us now when we rise up against them'?  Shall they return
with the wind of life?"

"The north wind came upon them and swept them away," his son-in-law
replied, employing the sachem's figurative speech.  "You have something
to tell me, Shuswap?"

"There is a strange ship come to the high cliffs, a great ship from the
land of the accursed people," said the old man.  "What is this that you
have told us, Gitsa?  Said you not that the King of England shall send
many ships and men when the ice has gone, to drive out the men of
France and restore their own to the tribes of the Iroquois?  What is
this that we see?  The priest of France sends more ships, and more men
who shall kill the beasts of the forest and the fish of the waters, and
drive us back with their fire-tubes into the forests of the north where
the enemies of our race, the Algonquins, lie ever in wait.  Is there a
king in England, Gitsa?  Has he ships to send out?  Has he men to put
into them?  Have you lied to the sachems of the Iroquois?"

"Be not afraid, Shuswap," said the white man.  "You shall learn whether
there be a king of England or no.  But he has many enemies in the
far-away world, and these he must conquer first.  Even now we are
sending a messenger to the king's country, and he shall return with
ships and men, and the French shall flee before them."

The man of Kent spoke with a heavy heart.  He dared not confess what he
believed to be the truth--namely, that England was already embroiled in
civil war.

"A tribe divided against itself shall be annihilated," said the sachem
sharply, with the clairvoyant power of the primitive man.  "The
remaining tribes stand by until it is exhausted, and then fall upon
that tribe, and it is known no more.  Is it so with the English, Gitsa?"

"It is not so," replied the Englishman, a flush upon his tanned
features.  "England stands above other nations of the world, even as
the sun is greater than all lights.  She shines over the earth in her
strength.  Were there no England the world would fall into decay, the
creatures who supply us with meat and fur would die, the fish would
fail in the waters, the forests would wither, there would be no rain
and no light by night or by day.  The sun would turn black, the moon
would fall into the sea, the very gods would die if England were no
more.  She shall take possession of this land in her own time, and
Frenchmen shall have no place in it except as subjects of our king."

The old sachem lifted his cunning eyes and said: "It is well, Gitsa.
But if it be so, why does not your king lift his hand and drive away
his enemies, or blow with his breath and destroy their ships?  Surely
that would be a small thing to a king who governs the world."

"It would be a small thing in truth," replied the Englishman, smiling
in spite of his sorrow.  "But the ways of the king are not our ways.
He allows his enemies to go upon their course, until a day comes when
he shall say, 'You have gone too far.'  It is thus that he shows his
power."

"It is so," said the sachem gravely.  "We cannot read the mind of him
who rules.  One year there are many animals in the forest, and we live
in plenty.  The next we starve.  A small tribe overthrows a great one.
A great tribe becomes too prosperous and is plagued with pestilence.
The young men are smitten.  The old live on.  The wind destroys the
forest, the river breaks its own banks.  The lightning strikes down the
totem-pole which we have raised for his pleasure.  It is so.  There is
a mystery in life.  The gods destroy their own handiwork.  They remove
the strong, and let the weak survive."

He passed on, an erect figure, in spite of his age, and treading firmly.

Onawa, a silent listener to their talk, stepped out.  She was good to
look upon, with her wealth of black hair, her large eyes, her rounded
face, the cheeks and lips lightly touched with paint, her slim muscular
figure.  She could run against any man, and aim an arrow with the
sureness of any forester of Nottingham.  But she was headstrong, as
changeable as water, and the Englishman did not trust her.

"Where have you been, Onawa?" he said.

"I have come from the camp with my father," she replied.  "Where have
you left your son?  They say, among the tribes, that he grows into a
great warrior.  They say also that he carries wood and draws water and
cuts up the deer which he has killed.  Our young men despise a woman's
work."

"I have taught him the duty of helping his mother," came the reply.
"In my country a man lives for his mother or his wife, and her good
favour is his glory."

The girl hesitated, a frown crossing her forehead.  "Why are the French
so beautiful, so bold-looking?" she asked suddenly.

"That they may captivate the minds and eyes of women who are weak."

"They are better to look at than Englishmen.  They do not wear old
garments marked with dirt.  They do not let the hair upon their faces
grow down their bodies.  They do not talk deep in their throats.  They
are not serious.  I love to hear them talk, to see them move.  They
walk like men who own the world."

"I have warned you against them," he said earnestly.  "They are the
natural enemies of your people.  Consider!  What Frenchman has ever
married into your tribe and settled down among you?"

The girl laughed scornfully, and turned to go, grasping her long hair
in her hand.

"You hide from them because you know that they are better men than
you," she taunted.  "It was a Frenchman who first came Jo our country
from the other world.  Perhaps there was no England in those days.  The
sun loves to shine upon Frenchmen.  The English live in the mists.  You
have taken my sister for wife, but I--I, Onawa, daughter of Shuswap,
would marry a Frenchman."

"Never shall I wish you a harder fate," retorted the calm man; and
having thus spoken he turned aside towards the tiny English settlement
to greet his friends and join again his son.

It was the first hour of night when Viner started upon his great
journey.  The forest was white with a moon, and sparks of phosphorus
darted across the falls.  When the wooden bars were drawn out of their
sockets and the five men emerged from the palisade, the monotonous
chirping of frogs ceased abruptly, and a great calm ensued.

In single file they passed along the dark trail, the wet bush sweeping
their legs, the branches locked overhead.  They rounded the red fires
which marked the camping-ground of the Oneidas; they smelt the acrid
smoke, and dimly sighted many a brown lean-to; the dogs jumped out
barking.  They passed, the lights disappeared, the silence closed down.
Presently the trail divided; the branch to the left leading to the
river, that to the right bearing inland to the lakes, rivers, and
hunting-grounds known only to the Indians.

"Get you back now," said Viner, halting at the parting of the ways.
"We are already in the country of the enemy.  Bid me here God-speed."

There they clasped hands, and in the act of farewell Flower slipped
into Viner's hand a little black stone marked with a vein of chalk.
"Keep it, lad," he muttered.  "One spring when I was near drowning in
the Thames by being held in the weeds I caught this stone from the
river-bed.  Methinks it has protected me from ill.  May that same
fortune be on you, and more added to it, in the work which lies before
you."

A ray of moonlight fell through an opening in the trees, and whitened
the five keen faces.

"Superstition made never a soldier of any man," muttered the stern
voice of the Puritan.  "Fling that idolatry to the bush, Geoffrey, and
go your way, trusting rather in the Lord with a psalm upon your lips."

"It is but a reminder of home for the lad," protested Flower gently.
"We have each other.  But in the solitudes what shall he have?"

"'Tis but a stone from our river, friend Hough," said Geoffrey timidly.
"I thank you, neighbour," he added.

"Fare you well," said old Penfold sadly.  "We shall lack you sore."

They turned away, and instantly became lost from the man who was going
south, because the trail bent sharply.  The little band of adventurers,
now reduced to four, walked slowly and sorrowfully towards New Windsor,
until they came out upon the lake, and heard the beavers gnawing the
rushes, and the wind splashing the fresh water up the beach.

"What has come to our nightingales?" said Penfold suddenly.  "I like
not this silence."

The frogs about the palisade were songless, and the sign was ominous.
At their leader's hasty remark the others came to a stand, and scanned
the prospect keenly, until silently and abruptly the ghost-like shape
of a woman rose between them and the moon.

"'Tis but the girl Onawa, daughter of Shuswap," muttered Woodfield
reassuringly; but there was a suspicion in his mind which prompted him
to add, "What does she here?"

Even while he put the question Hough cried out, and pointed with a wild
gesture, feeling that same moment for his sword.  Gazing in the
direction which he indicated with a quivering hand, his brethren saw
before them the palisade, but not as they had left it.  The wooden bars
had been set back into their sockets, as though to forebode the
occupation of their enclosure by an enemy.

"Stay!" called Onawa haughtily, when the men approached her at a run.
"Your tepee has passed from you into the power of the king."

"There is only one king," cried old Penfold.  Then he shouted at her,
for all the land to hear, "What king?"

"King Louis," said the girl defiantly.




CHAPTER IX.

THE GAUNTLET DOWN.

Oskelano, chief of the Algonquins, that unstable race, false alike to
friend and foe, and doomed to be the first of the savage tribes to be
extinguished, reached the fortress about noon on the day which had been
fixed for Geoffrey's departure to the unknown lands.  Roussilac
personally met the treacherous old man upon the heights, and dazzled
his savage eyes with the splendour of a blue surcoat, upon which
gleamed the fleur-de-lys worked in gold.  He proceeded to point out the
soldiers in their brave array, the strong huts of wood or stone dotted
about the cliff, the _St. Wenceslas_ riding upon the river, the
glistening guns, and the flashing steel.  Finally he bade the old
savage note the impregnable nature of the French position.

"Behold the citadel which my master has ordered me to build for your
protection," the commandant continued, pouring his figments through the
leering mouth of the dwarf Gaudriole.  "We have not destroyed your
forests, nor robbed you of your shelters.  You may enter our forts in
safety, and obtain whatsoever you desire in exchange for skins and
feathers.  We do not mass together in one place.  We distribute our
strength.  Our forts are dotted along the coast.  The tribes of
Maryland and of Massachusetts have shown you how the English congregate
upon the Potomac River.  When you go to them for supplies of food, or
demanding recompense for that which they have taken from you, they
threaten you with death.  Is it not so?"

"Um," replied the Algonquin, not a muscle of his face stirring.

"The English have their eye upon this north of the continent," went on
the governor.  "In the south they rule, but only by permission of our
king.  Have you obtained any benefits from them?  Have they not rather
hunted you like wild beasts when you have resisted them?  Remember how
Samuel de Champlain armed you so that you might fight against the
tribes of the Iroquois.  He did not fear the Iroquois, but he saw you
in danger, and reached out his hand to save you."

"Um, um," exclaimed Oskelano, with some symptom of feeling.

"And now the King of France bids you choose between him and Charles of
England.  If you accept my master's friendship he shall protect you
from your enemies.  But if you refuse him he shall leave you to the
mercy of the Iroquois and the English, who shall rob and kill you until
there is not one Algonquin left."

"The chief desires to know," said the interpreter, "why it is that the
English in the south have brought their wives and families, and why the
French come alone."

"The English desire to take the country that they may make it their
home and abide here for ever," answered Roussilac.  "The French are
here to protect the Algonquins, and when danger is over they shall
return to their wives and families in the homeland."

"The chief also desires to know what is the cause of the king's
friendliness to a people whom he has never seen," continued the
interpreter.

"King Louis has forbidden the English to enter this country, and when
they disobey he sends ships and men against them.  It is his will that
the Algonquins shall possess this land in peace."

"Um," said Oskelano profoundly, when these fictions had been expounded.

"What says the wooden-faced fool?" asked Roussilac.

"The doctors of his tribe tell him that all white men are liars,"
replied the dwarf.  "But the English are greater liars than the French."

"Would that I might collect all the savages in this country upon yonder
island in mid-stream, and there exterminate them root and branch," the
governor muttered.

"Import a shipload of bad brandy, commandant," suggested the
interpreter, with an evil grin.  "That would spread a disease which
might carry them off in a few generations."

"What say you?" exclaimed Roussilac.  "Away, hunchbacked devil!"

But when Oskelano had gone to the quarters which had been prepared for
him, and Gaudriole had followed with a grating laugh, Roussilac
remained to pace the cliff and consider the evil thought.  "'Tis a vile
plan," he muttered.  "Yet beasts are poisoned when they overrun the
land.  By St. Louis, it is a plan which might work."

That poor twisted freak of nature, Gaudriole, had lived formerly in the
gutters of Paris by his wits and the predatory powers of his fingers,
begging by day, stealing by night.  Favoured by fortune beyond his
deserts, he had continued to escape the great stone gallows which had
been erected for the dismissal of vagabonds of his kind, and had
finally escaped to the New World, there to fall speedily into the hands
of the Indians.  Having saved his life by the performance of some
sleight-of-hand tricks, he robbed the tribe which had taken him captive
and escaped that same night.  For years he had lived among the natives,
learning their language, adopting their manner of living, until he had
made himself as much at home in the dense forests as in the slums of
his native city.  Indian braves and French soldiers alike stood in awe
of him on account of his impish form and devilish ways.  The governors
of the forts found him useful because he brought them information.  The
free life suited the unprincipled dwarf, who was little better than an
animal invested with a trick of reasoning; and he knew that, like an
animal, he was liable to be hanged and his body thrown to the crows any
day of his sinful life.

The cabaret in the Rue des Pecheurs was noisy that evening because the
ship which had lately arrived from Marseilles had replenished Michel's
casks.  Soldiers were gaming behind the red curtain which half-blinded
the single window, and fierce songs sounded under the cliff as
Gaudriole shuffled down the pathway.  The dwarf had not listened to the
welcome noise of the tavern for many a month, and his crooked heart
heated at the sound.

"Saints of God!" the high voice of La Salle sounded.  "If it be true,
as they say, that the devil lends favour to gamblers, then are you
lost, brother, body and soul.  Michel, an you sing that lewd song
again----  A plague strike you drunkards!  Have the streets of
Marseilles no new song?"

"There is nothing new, my father," bawled a hoarse voice.  "His sacred
Eminence holds all France as a man might contain in his hand an egg.
Only strong men, good fighters, be they priests or laymen, find favour
in the Cardinal's eyes, and 'tis said, though with what truth I know
not, that he sways his Holiness as the wind may play with a cornstalk.
Not a brick has been added to Marseilles this year past.  The very
mass-bread is mouldy, and the women are hags----"

"Peace, brute!" La Salle shouted.  "Laroche, smite me yon babbler
across his mouth."

Standing in the doorway, Gaudriole saw the fat priest heave, and aim a
terrific blow at a half-drunken soldier whose head lolled against the
wall.  The dwarf shuffled forward with his malevolent laugh as the
soldier lurched aside with an oath.

"The English are upon you, Messires!" he shouted with all his strength.

Instantly there arose indescribable confusion.  Trestles and stools
were flung aside, wine from overthrown goblets soaked black patterns
into the earthen floor, as every soldier made for the outside, grasping
his sword, or swearing because he could not find it.  Out of the noise
grated the laugh of the dwarf, who slunk against the log wall, rubbing
his hairy hands.

"A jest!  A jest!" screamed Ferraud of shrill voice, his waxen face
regaining colour as he wagged his hand at the dwarf.  "Masters, behold
Gaudriole!  Liar, hunchback, bastard!  Were you used as you deserve you
would hang from the roof-tree.  Masters, come back.  There are no
English within a thousand miles."

"What found ye outside, my soldiers?" chuckled Gaudriole, as the men of
Mars tumbled disorderedly into the cabaret.  "There is the wind.  The
west wind, which the Indians say brings all that a man may wish for.
Comrades, did ye find the wind?"

His hideous figure doubled, and his laughter grated again.

"Buffoon of the pit!" cried Laroche, striding up and shaking the dwarf
until his head rolled.  "Would make a laughing-stock of his Majesty's
brave men, deformed imp of darkness?  Come forth now and sing to us.
Sing to us, I say, lest I beat your crooked shape into a lath."

Because Gaudriole was aware of his value he dared to play such pranks.
He was indeed a capably grotesque comedian, and formerly had garnered
many a capful of sous at the corners of Paris by his antics, songs, and
contortions.  His pathetic shape had saved him from the punishment
which often attended the tricks of less daring jesters; and it may be
surmised that his malignant face and cross-seeing eyes not unfrequently
repelled the would-be striker.  Men were superstitious in the days when
the world was large.

"Some wine first," the hunchback panted, for the priest's arm was
rough.  "The ship moves not till she has wind in her sails.  I have
been a drinker of water these months, and my dreams have been red of
wine.  Ah, friend! may your beard grow golden, and curl even as your
mistress would have it."

This to a singularly ugly soldier, with a flat, scarred face and
stubbly black beard, who handed him a potful of wine.

"My beard becomes me well enough," the man growled, when a laugh went
against him.

"Well, in faith.  It grows out of your skin like bristles from a
chimney-brush."

"Cease your gibes, hunchback, and to your capers.  We grow thin for
want of laughter in this accursed country," cried Laroche.

"What shall it be, Messires, a dance, a clever contortion, or a song--a
song of fair ladies, such as one may see upon the streets of Paris,
saving the presence of these most holy and renowned priests?" jeered
Gaudriole, with his intolerable laugh.

"All.  Give us all, buffoon, and invent somewhat for the occasion," the
master of ceremonies ordered.

Not loth to practise his talents, Gaudriole took the centre of the
floor.  Voice, in a musical sense, he had none.  The noise he made was
little better than the screech of wind roaring through the hollow
mouthpiece of some gargoyle of the roof-gutter.  Every fresh contortion
of his face was more hideous than the last, as he danced, shouted, and
twisted bonelessly over the wine splashes on the ground, until he
appeared to the spectators as some frightful creature of nightmare,
presenting the evil scenes and actions of their past lives before their
wide-opened eyes.

He concluded his vaudeville amid shouts of applause, in which La Salle
alone took no part.  The priest was disgusted at this exhibition of so
much that was brutal, and he was disgusted with himself for remaining a
listener and a watcher.  He was, for those days, well-educated, and the
spectacle of the little monster writhing and yelling before him
repelled.  It was Paris in truth that Gaudriole recalled; but not, for
him, the Paris of the corners and byways, not the Paris of vagabonds
and free-livers, but the city of the most brilliant court upon earth,
the city of intrigue where Cardinal Richelieu spun his red web to
entangle the feet of kings.  The cabaret was but an interlude, a by-way
of the path to power; but the priest realised, as he sat among the
fools, that he had trodden the by-ways frequently and too well.

He left the tavern with its fumes of smoke and wine, and escaped into
the cool, moist wind under the cliff, but a pair of cross-seeing eyes
followed his departure, and Gaudriole wormed his way through a
labyrinth of arms that would have detained him for more folly, and
hopped loosely up the ascent of the crooked path.

"What would you, creature of sin?" demanded La Salle, when he perceived
who it was that followed him.

"A word with you, holiness," panted the dwarf.  "The woman Onawa sends
you greeting and prays that you will meet her at the beginning of the
forest where formerly she saw you by chance.  She engages to show you
where your enemy may be found.  She waits for you now, most renowned."

"Dog!" exclaimed La Salle.  "What have I to do with this woman?  What
enemy is it of whom she speaks?  I have no enemy save Van Vuren, who
lives now under the protection of the governor, and slinks at his heels
like a frightened hound."

Gaudriole could never suppress the malignant grin which escaped from
the ends of his slit mouth whenever he spoke.

"I but repeat the message as it was spoken.  Think you that I dare
betray a Frenchman, and that a most holy priest?  An I wished to do so,
the game would not be worth the candle.  Gaudriole loves life as yonder
crows love carrion."

"See you tell no man of this," the priest muttered, as he moved towards
the cliff.

The way was rough, the breeze cold, as La Salle crossed the heights,
turning once to see the flag beating over the fort and men creeping
like midges about their tasks.  He descended, and the swaying wall of
forest broke the wind.  The pale purple crocus pushed its furry hood
from the short grass, the songless robins hopped before him, the smell
of fresh water was in the air.  The fighting priest felt strong as he
breathed the wind.

Onawa flashed out of the brush and waved her bow to him.

"She has painted her face and looks forth ready for battle," said the
priest.  "A comely maid, by St. Louis.  What a figure is there, and
what freedom!  She has a trick of moving her head which would make a
fashion at court."

"Come!" Onawa called.  "Hasten!"

She spoke in English, and hope revived in the heart of the priest.

"English.  I show you," she cried.  "I have waited a long time.  It is
growing late," she went on in her own tongue, hoping vainly that he
might understand.

"I commit my body to this adventure," said La Salle.  "If these be the
English who captured the Dutch vessel and mocked us, the reward of
discovery shall be mine.  A ship sails for home next week.  Tidings
from the New World carry apace throughout Europe.  The first step.  Ha,
it is the first step that gives confidence.  The rest is easy."

He followed Onawa along a trail which bewildered with innumerable
twistings, and after an hour's sharp walking they reached an untrodden
bed of sage brush glistening upon the flats.  Onawa picked up a faint
thread, which was invisible to La Salle's eyes, and led him on through
bush where the spikes of dead pines snagged his feet.  Then came a cold
ravine down the sides of which quaking asps drooped and moss spread
thickly.  More forest, growing every pace denser, until the girl
stopped and motioned her companion to enter what appeared to be a hole
made in the centre of a thicket.  She held back the rough bushes to
allow him to pass ahead.  For a moment La Salle hesitated.  He was
human enough to know that his manliness had made an impression upon
Onawa, but at the same time he feared treachery.  The Iroquois were
sworn foes of the French, and here was a daughter of the chief of the
Cayugas abetting a Frenchman.  He looked at the girl.  She smiled
brilliantly and made an impatient movement, and he advanced boldly into
the cold thicket.

The ground shelved, and under the arched branches a spring freshet,
scarcely seven feet in width, ran hurriedly into the unseen.  A canoe
rocked upon the water, held to the crooked root of a pine by a knotted
willow.  Onawa motioned him into this canoe, and when he had taken his
place after sundry lurchings and difficulties, the girl stepped in,
unfastened the twig, and struck her paddle into the water.  The canoe
swept away under the low branches.

"I would I had Laroche with me," said La Salle, watching the cold trees
and the pale rocks approaching and receding.

"English," said Onawa softly from time to time.  "I show you."

The trees went back and the rocks heightened.  La Salle heard water
rolling up a beach and the sweep of wind across an open surface.  The
freshet widened and grew more shallow; the keel of the canoe scraped
across a ridge of silt.  With a deft turn of her paddle Onawa shot the
prow upon a sand bank, and signed to him to land.

She led him along a cliff path, across a flat, again into sage brush,
and finally into more forest.  They moved stealthily under cover, until
the trees thinned, and willow scrub sprang thickly out of a grey soil.
At a certain spot the girl halted and motioned her companion to look
forth.

La Salle saw the little settlement of New Windsor nestling in its
enclosure, and needed no longer the information, "English," which the
girl offered with a smile.

They lay in wait while the night grew upon them.  La Salle watched when
the bars of the palisade were removed and five men came forth, and
marvelled to learn the weakness of the enemy.  A bold scheme instantly
suggested itself.  He would engage the enemy single-handed upon their
return, and wear them down one by one.

Here Onawa became an obstacle, because he could not explain to her his
intentions.  He did his best by signs and broken English, but the girl
misunderstood him.  She believed that he was telling her that he had
taken the settlement, and she was expected to instruct the Englishmen
that their property had passed away from them.

The white moon ascended the sky.  The wooden bars sprawled where the
Englishmen had left them.  La Salle felt confident that he would be
able to strike down the owners of the place as they passed singly into
the fort.

Suddenly a great hound came out of the forest, sniffed his way to the
palisade, and stopped before the entry, growling and lashing his tail.
Onawa recognised the hound, and called to him.  He heard her voice and
turned his leonine head to snarl fiercely.  Then he headed for the
forest, giving tongue as he ran.  Onawa sprang to the palisade, and
struggled to replace the bars.  For a moment she pulled her blanket
over her face, leaving none of it visible except the eyes and forehead,
and the priest shivered.  He remembered the mysterious swordsman who
had wounded him upon the Rue des Pecheurs.  He assisted Onawa to put up
the bars.

They heard voices in the forest.  La Salle knew that he would require
his full skill in sword-play to save himself that night.




CHAPTER X.

PILLARS OF THE HOUSE.

The moonlight fell softly upon a clearing where a small fire
smouldered, where the lord of the isles and his son sat in silence, and
between them the great hound full-stretched in sleep.  They were
resting before returning home to their island among the lost waters.
Only the cracking of the fiery wood, the overhead boughs chafing
fitfully, and the snapping of twigs too brittle to survive disturbed
the silence of the night.

The little group made a stern picture in the light of the moon.  The
hound bitten and blemished by many a conquering fight; the lean man
scarred by sword wounds; the boy scarce out of childhood, hungry to
learn--even the boy wore his scars.  He was developing in a hard
school.  He could not know that the work which his father pointed out
would receive, if accomplished, neither thanks nor reward.  The
pioneers of empire might be compared with the insects of the coral
reef, insignificant atoms who have planted a foundation for the sea to
build upon.

"Father," said the boy at length, "shall we not be returning to our
home?"

There was another interval before the stern man looked up.

"Methinks when you spoke that word I saw another home," he said,
raising a hand to his eyes as though he would dispel the vision.  "I
saw methinks a grey house, its chimneys wreathed with ivy.  Lawns
spread far, divided by paths, bound with close-cropped hedges of yew
and lined with flowers, where peacocks lift their feathers to the sun.
Down a green slope to the little river I see orchards of cherry, snowy
with blossom.  A road ends at a church where I may read your name and
mine upon many a stone slab.  There lies your grandfather, there my
mother.  It is peaceful in that garden of Kent, our home at the other
side of the world."

Young Richard leaned forward over his knees.  His father was speaking
in parables.  He had seen only the primaeval forest, the river torrents,
the lakes with their land-locked fish, the icefields.  He had supposed
the world to be made of such.  He had heard the clash of swords, the
shouts of war.  He had supposed it was so the world over.  A place of
peace had never entered into the scheme of his boyish calculation.

"It is a dream of which you speak, father?"

"Ay, my lad, for me a dream.  You perchance shall see England with your
own eyes, for when I am gone you shall be the head of a family which
has for its motto, 'Let traitors beware.'  Son, have you never wished
to learn your name?"

"My name is Sir Richard," answered the proud boy.

"I, your father, was called once Sir Thomas Iden.  Formerly we were a
famous family, but now we wane, wielding an influence only over the
Kentish village which has been ours for centuries.  Two hundred years
past the then head of our family, holding the office of sheriff of his
county at the time, slew a traitor named John Cade, who had openly
rebelled against the crown, and for this King Henry the Sixth conferred
upon him the honour of knighthood, presenting him also with a
coat-of-arms.  In return for other services his Majesty bestowed upon
our house an unique privilege: right was granted to the head of the
family in each generation to confer knighthood upon his eldest son, if
that son should be deserving of the distinction.  My father knighted
me, when I returned from an exploit against the Irish; and I handed the
honour on to you, when I found in you the hereditary longing for the
sword."

The boy looked steadily across the fire, with wonder in his eyes.
"This then is not our home," he said, weighing his words with strange
gravity.  "Should we not be in England, fighting for the king?"

"God knows he needs the pillars of our house to help support his
throne," said Sir Thomas.  "But no man can serve in two countries.  I
have made myself a colonist, have married a daughter of the land, here
I can serve England if not my king, and here shall I die like a man of
Kent, with my face to the foe.  I was the first Englishman to make a
home upon this bitter land.  I resolved to build about me a colony, to
do for the north what John Winthrop and the papist Lord Baltimore are
doing in the south.  I have appealed.  I have sent for help.  But
England will not hear."

He paced through the wet grass, his hands clenched behind.

"Is the cry of the colonies nothing to them?  A handful of good men may
only sell their lives dearly in the trust that their example may fire
better men to deeds of conquest.  Here we shall die in exile, and be
sent to haunt the great oblivion of these forests.  Two such
ships-of-war as sailed from Devon in the golden days of Elizabeth, two
such ships as the merchant traders of Cheapside could send us without
loss, with another Hawkins to command, manned by our brave sailors of
the east country, would sweep the French out of their forts and clear
the land of them for ever.  The Dutch hold the seas.  France extends
her arms.  England is again divided, the bloody rivalry between the
houses of York and Lancaster having taught her no wisdom.  The
Parliament is against the king, and the country must bleed for it.  We
are abandoned."

The boy knew nothing of the politics of Europe, neither could he enter
into his father's dream of empire.  He hated the French merely because
they were enemies, and because they had betrayed the Iroquois.  To go
out and fight against them was more exciting, because more dangerous,
than to engage with the beasts of the forest; but the struggle between
the Powers of Europe for the ownership of North America had injected no
venom into his soul.

"Shall I not live here always?" he asked.  "Am I not to choose a maid
from the Cayugas, and settle upon the isles beside you, my father?"

"Talk not of the future, son.  Life is to-day, not hereafter.  That
lies in the hand of God to give or to withhold.  You shall return when
I am gone--return, did I say?  You shall go to England with letters to
a notary in Maidstone, and he shall see that you come into your own.
You are dark of face, but English in heart, my Richard."

The boy lifted his head with a sudden sharp movement.  "Perchance that
day shall never come."

The hound also lifted his head, and as his eyes sought the haunt of
shadows his jaw dropped in a wild howl.

"Spirits sweep across my burying-place," whispered the youth.

The hound lowered his head and howled again.

"Frenchmen," muttered the boy.

The brute slouched a few feet, broke into a trot, and disappeared.

"He goes in the direction of New Windsor," said the knight.  "Hast
heard any sound in the forest?"

"There is no stir," replied the boy, holding his well-trained ear to
the ground.  "The smoke from our fire carries.  Let us go aside into
the shadow of the bush and watch."

They retreated, flashing glances to right and left.  The snap of a
twig, the very crushing of pine needles, sufficed to disturb that calm.
There was no premonitory shiver of the moon-rays, no suggestion of any
human presence upon the chilled air.  Their feet sank audibly into the
white moss.  Their breath made the semblance of a whisper between
father and son, the lion ready, the cub longing.  The rim of the deep
shadow ran behind as they turned to face the clearing they had
abandoned.

"The wind blows from New Windsor," said the knight.  "The wind off
Couchicing."

"If Blood takes hold of a man he shall die," went on the boy.  "He will
hold at the back of the neck, and there hang until his fangs meet.  Ha!
Didst hear that?"

A branch had broken with a dry report.  The trees moaned, and a few
distended cones struck the ground like spent bullets.

"The breeze freshens.  Methinks I hear the waves breaking upon the
beach."

A raven passed before the moon, knelling violently.

"He smells carrion," whispered the boy.  "Already he smells blood upon
my sword."

"Peace, boy," said his father; adding, compassionately, "He is but a
child."

"Nay, father," said Richard, his blood rising.  "I am no child.  See
the mark of my wounds!  Remember that glorious day when we captured the
Dutch privateer.  I have prayed for such another day.  Did I there
acquit myself as a child?  Or did you call, 'Richard, come back!  You
are too bold.'  Hast forgotten, Sir Thomas?"

His father passed the sword into his left hand, and threw his right arm
about his son's shoulder, drawing him upon his own thin body, and
kissed his cheek.  Silence came between them.  It was the first time
that the man had kissed the boy, and both for a moment were ashamed;
then young Richard's heart swelled with the pride of having won his
father's love.

As they stood they moved, and their swords clashed.  They remembered
their other bond of relationship, the brotherhood of the sword, and
each drew back.

The raven had gone, but his note came upon the wind.

The boy stood leaning forward, his ears drinking in the shuddering
noises of the bush, his face sharp with cold.  The smoke stood upright
in the clearing like a swathed mummy.  Now and again a spark drifted,
or a flurry of white wood-ash circled.  There was yet no voice from the
lungs of the forest.

"Blood smelt no animal," said the resolute Richard.  "He does but
tongue softly when he follows a bear.  That howl he gives when he runs
on the track of a man."

"A wanderer lost in the forest.  A spy from the fortress.  One of
Roussilac's creatures," his father muttered.

"They would take possession of the forest," the boy said passionately.
"Along the river I have come upon trees marked by the robbers
with--what is the name of that sign which they bear upon their flag?"

"The fleur-de-lys.  They brand the pines with that mark to signify that
the trees have been chosen for ship-masts and are the property of
France.  Our hut upon the island is faced with logs which bear their
brand."

"The Cayugas fell such trees and burn them, or cut them in half as they
lie.  The Iroquois are yet masters, despite the decrees of King Louis.
How cold is this wind!  Let me but warm my hands in the embers of our
fire."

The boy crossed into the moonlight, and knelt within the smoke, rubbing
the palms of his hands upon the warm ground.  His father stood in the
shadow, and watched every moving line of his son's body, muttering as
he listened to the outside:

"At his age I was learning how to figure and spell in Tonbridge school.
Quarterstaff and tennis were my sports, with mumming and chess at home.
His sport is to hunt the wild beast, to track the deer, to lie in wait
for men.  The sword is his pastime.  His pleasure the dream.  God
pardon me for bringing him into the world."

The breeze bore along in a gust, bringing the muffled bayings of a
hound.

"He calls me!" exclaimed the boy.  "That is Blood's war-cry.  Come!" he
shouted.

"Patience, boy.  Let the dog guide us.  By advancing recklessly we may
fall into a trap."

Each throb of the night brought the wild sounds nearer.  Blood was in
full cry, the foam blowing from his jaws, the hackles stiff upon his
back.  He was coming down the wind full-stretched.  The bush gave, the
dew scattered from the high grass in frosty showers as he leapt the
moss-beds, his foot-tracks far apart.  But no sound followed, except
the play of the branches and the murmur of the rising lake.

"Remember how I brought him from the encampment as a puppy," said
Richard appealingly, "how I have trained him from the time that his
eyes opened.  Whatever he discovers is mine.  Say now that I may go
with him.  He and I can cover the ground together.  You shall follow in
your own time."

"Perchance they shall be too many for you," said the father.

"Nay, we shall advance with care, and hide if there be danger.  The
whole army of France could not follow me in this forest."

"There comes no noise of fighting."

"It is but a spy who has discovered New Windsor.  He must not carry
that secret back to the fortress."

The hound broke forth, clouding the cold air with his breath, his eyes
like lamps.  He leapt at his master, and snatched his sleeve with a
frothing muzzle, pulling him away.

"Say now that I may go," the boy cried.  "The enemy may already have
taken fear, and be retreating as fast as his cowardly feet may carry
him."

The long awaited shout drifted down the wind, and the pale moon
shivered when she heard.

"Go!" granted the stern man.

"St. George!" yelled the maddened child, clutching at the hound's thick
collar of fur.  The cry had no meaning.  It was but a shout of war, a
valve to his passion.  "On, Blood!  St. George!"

At full cry they were gone from the moonlight into gloom.




CHAPTER XI.

THE SWORD IMBRUED

While the pendulum of a clock might have swayed thrice, the four
venturers stood facing Onawa as though her words had turned them into
stone.  Then Hough, forgetting all save rage and lust for vengeance,
broke forward to reach the traitress.  Instantly she ran for the bush,
and the voice of Penfold called his follower back.

"Lift not your hand against a woman," he cried.  "To the forest, my
lads."

"To the forest an you will," Hough shouted.  "I at least shall advance
to smite this woman's partner in sin, be he Frenchman or devil."

"Be it so, neighbour," his captain answered.  "Together let us stand,
or together fall.  Advance, then, and take the place by storm."

As they rushed out, La Salle braced himself to face the odds.  He made
a few passes to free his arm, and trod the beaten ground to make sure
that it would not yield.  Then, loosening the top bar, he flung it
forth as the spidery form of Hough descended, and it struck before the
Puritan's feet and stopped him dead.  The same moment La Salle sprang
upon the lowest bar, but the support weighed down beneath its burden,
and his blade merely stabbed the air.

"A priest, neighbours," Hough shouted.  "Now to avenge our martyrs
burnt at Smithfield by Bloody Mary and the Pope."

Onawa, standing forgotten at the edge of the bush, cast around her a
searching glance.  The encampment of her tribe was far distant.  The
hound had gone out howling.  Danger from that quarter was yet to come.
She stood in shadow, the moonlight whitening the sand in front and
darkening the shapes which hurried to regain their own.  No eyes were
upon her.  She raised her left hand to her right shoulder and with the
same ominous motion dropped upon one knee, falling unconsciously into
the pose of a goddess of the chase.

The attackers hesitated, knowing the reputation of the man with whom
they had to deal.  To attempt to scale the palisade at that point meant
certain loss, and they were not strong enough to take the risk.  Hunted
and hunters glared at each other over the pine bars.  "Get you round,
Jesse," whispered Penfold.  "The dog is bold because he knows his back
is safe."

Woodfield ran beneath the palisading to a place known to him, where he
might scale the fence and so take the priest from behind.

La Salle detected the ruse and taunted his baiters in native French,
while his keen eyes sought an opportunity to strike.  He bent
cautiously and gathered a handful of sand.  Hough sprang upon the bars,
and for the first time swords were clashed; for the first time also the
Puritan realised the power of the priest's wrist.  The point escaped
his forearm by a mere margin, and La Salle laughed contemptuously.

"Brave Lutherans!" he cried.  "Four soldiers against a priest.
Advance, soldiers.  The point a trifle higher.  The elbow close to the
side.  Now you stand too near together."

"Wait until friend Woodfield comes up," muttered Flower.  "Then he
shall laugh his last."

As he spoke there came a sound through the moonbeams, as it were the
vibrating of the wings of a humming-bird, and to the music of this
disturbance Flower flung up his arms with a choking cough and closed
his sentence with a gasp of pain.  His sword darted to the ground.  He
swayed to and fro, his eyes wild, his mouth open in a useless endeavour
to appeal to his comrades, and then plunged down, like a man diving
into the water to swim, and sprawled at their feet, with a rough shaft
topped by a crow's feather springing from his back.

A cloud of sand stung the faces of the survivors, and before they could
recover their eyesight, or awaken to the knowledge of Woodfield's
approaching shout, La Salle was across the bars and bearing down upon
them, his cold face branded with its mocking smile.  He dashed their
opposition aside, and turned, flushed with success, to renew the
struggle, the taunts still ringing from his tongue.

But help was near at hand.  Before the maddened and half stupefied
Englishmen were able to move the night again resounded.  Blood had
scented the foe and could no longer be restrained.  The priest wheeled
round when he heard those howls, and escaped into the shadows with
Penfold and Woodfield at his heels.

There was indeed one man, and he the most vengeful of his enemies, who
might have outstripped the priest, but it so happened that the
long-striding Puritan had lost his reason.  Obeying the first impulse,
he pursued the traitress, mad to avenge the good yeoman who was
stretched to his long sleep at the entrance to New Windsor.  Nor did he
realise his mistake until the shadow, after mocking him for a long
mile, flitted into the unknown depths of the bush, and so disappeared.

"Fear not, masters," called young Richard, as boy and dog passed,
running as freshly as at the start.  "Do but show my father which way I
have gone.  Blood shall hunt the Frenchman down, and I shall slay him.
I shall slay him, friends."

They swept on, flinging the dew across the bars of moonshine.  That
triumphant voice came back to the two men as they slackened speed for
lack of breath: "I shall slay the Frenchman.  I shall slay him,
friends."

Penfold sank upon a bed of moss and panted into his hands.  Woodfield
stood near, his breath coming in white steam, his breast rising and
falling.

"It is God's way, neighbour," he said gently.

The old leader's voice came in a sobbing whisper:

"Through the device of the devil, smitten down foully....  A man of few
words, a good soul, with a smile for all.  I knew him as a boy at home,
a gentle boy, who would never join in stoning birds in the hedgerow or
in killing butterflies, because, quoth he, God made them to give us
song and happiness.  And yet none quicker than he at ball or quintain,
none braver at quarterstaff.  Twice won he the silver arrow in Holborn
Fields, and at home would lead his mother to church a' Sundays, and a'
week-day drive the horses out to field.  A sober lad as ever sang with
the lark beside our Thames....  An arrow in the back, an arrow shot by
an Indian witch.  It passes all.  Call you that God's way?  God wills a
man to die in fair fight, with his death in front.  And this!  Oh,
George!  To fall like a beast hunted for the pot."

"Yet 'twas a soldier's end."

"Tell them not at home," cried Penfold.  "Let them not know, if ever we
see Thames-side again, how George Flower fell.  Ay, like a flower he
came up, and as a grass has he been mown down.  Many are the wiles of
Satan.  The arrow that flieth by night, the coward arrow of treachery.
'Tis a foul wind that blows out a good man's life.  He was a good man.
His old mother, if yet she live, may look upon his past and smile.
Such as George has made our England live.  The strong oaks of the land.
From treachery and sudden death, good Lord deliver us!"

"Amen, captain!"

"Where is friend Hough?" asked the old man sharply, rising and groping
like one awakened from sleep.

"I saw him rushing into the forest as a man possessed."

"His zeal consumes him.  I fear me while the madness last he will
thrust his sword through that witch and so bring us to trouble with the
Indians."

"She will escape from him in the forest."

"Bear with me," said Penfold brokenly.  "To-night I am old.  My leg
pains me so that I may hardly rest upon it.  What is here?  See!  Whom
have we yonder?"

The man of Kent came striding through, with the hot question: "Hast
seen my son?"

As shortly Woodfield answered, and the knight hurried on without a word
along the dim trail where the pursued and the pursuers had passed.

"I am but a useless hulk this night," groaned Penfold.  "Do you follow
and bring me word, while I stay to keep company with our George."

So Woodfield went.  It was but a parting for the hour.  He withdrew
himself from his tough old captain and fellow villager, without a grasp
of the hand, with no word of farewell, nor even a kindly look at the
rugged features that he loved, never dreaming that he and Simon Penfold
would speak again no more.

The knight, more skilled in woodcraft, proceeded faster than the
yeoman.  The clash of steel reached his ears against the wind, the wild
bayings of a dog, and deep French accents mingled with shrill
counter-blasts in an English tongue.  The shuddering forest became
hideous, and the moonbeams came to his eyes red between the branches.

Man La Salle feared not at all, but the fangs and glowing eyes of the
hound appalled.  Any moment the brute might spring upon his back.  He
could not hope to escape from hunters who covered the ground with the
speed of deer and might not be thrown off the scent.  He stopped,
breathing furiously, and set his back against a smooth trunk; but when
his foes swept up, and he beheld the size and innocence of the
sword-bearer, he laughed, even as Goliath laughed when young David came
out against him armed with a sling and a few smooth pebbles from the
brook.

"By the five wounds of God, 'tis but a child!" he muttered, as his
breath returned.  "May it never be said that La Salle ran in fear from
a baby and a dog."

He smiled with compassion for the white face which became visible when
a bar of light crossed it.  "I will deal lightly with the child," he
said, "but the dog must die, or he shall hunt me through the night."

"Down, Blood!" called the young voice; and the brute crouched like a
tiger, sweeping the grass madly with his tail.

"He bears himself like a veteran," muttered La Salle, with a brave
man's admiration for courage.  "The pity that he is so young!"

"On guard, sir!" shouted Richard, stepping up with the challenge which
his father had taught him.

"Back, little one," said the priest in his own tongue.  "Put up your
sword until you become a man, and return to your fishing-lines, and be
young while you may."

The boy could not understand one word of the hated language.  Saving
his breath, he replied by springing forward, to cross swords with his
renowned antagonist as confidently as on the former memorable night he
had faced his father.  A few passes, a turn or so, a quick lunge over
the guard, a rapid bout of skirmishing high upon the breast, and the
astonished Frenchman became assured that his youthful opponent was a
swordsman almost worthy of his steel.

"By St. Denis!" he muttered, playing his sword from side to side with
his inimitable sureness.  "What wonder is this!  Are these Englishmen
soldiers from their cradle?  A doughty stripling!  He fences like a
maitre d'armes."

But time was passing, others were upon his track, and, though La Salle
was willing to spare, he knew that he was compelled to strike.

He stepped forward, closed with his antagonist, and by a deft turn of
his iron wrist caught the boy's sword at the hilt and wrested it from
his hand.  Then he raised his point and lightly pricked the near
shoulder.

"Go in peace, my son," he said in English.

That contemptuous manner, naturally assumed before inferior and
superior alike, stung young Richard to the soul.  He ran for his sword,
while Blood sprang up with a deep challenge, and plunged after La
Salle, who again had taken to flight.  Richard followed at full speed,
his blood boiling to avenge the insult to his knighthood.

"They come," said La Salle resignedly.  "He must have the coup de
grace.  Now God have mercy upon his infant soul."

He came in his flight to a natural opening, one half in deep shadow,
the other lit by the sparkling moon and carpeted by short grass.
Columnar trees stood at regular intervals around this garden in the
forest.  A few night lilies opened their sulphur cups.  The place might
have been a dancing-ring for elves, and the priest crossed himself when
he stopped, looked round, and swiftly wiped his sword.

"The turf like a rich cloth," he murmured.  "The trees falling back,
the moon soft yet sufficient.  An ideal spot for sword-play.  But
methinks somewhat weird."

The peace of the glade was broken in a moment.  Blood dashed out, his
fangs bared, and made two fierce bounds over the turf.  La Salle fixed
his eye upon a white spot in the underpart of the flying body, and at
precisely the critical moment stepped aside, catching the hound upon
his point and running him through from the centre of the white patch to
the stiff hackles of his back.  He turned sharply, lest his sword
should break, and the dying body passed swiftly from his blade and
crashed into the bush.

"When killing is too easy it carries the mask of murder," the priest
muttered.

He turned again, for Richard was upon him with a sob of rage, and
shouting: "Devil!  You shall die for killing my dog, devil that you
are!"

Aware that his time was short, La Salle parried the boy's wild lunges
and replied by his own calculated attack.  In that supreme moment of
his life Richard fought, even as his father might have done, with
strength, accuracy, and cunning manoeuvre.  The swords played together
for little longer than a minute, and then came the _passe en tierce_
outside the guard, which put an end to the unequal fight and left a
body bleeding upon the grass.

A cry came from the forest, a near reassuring cry:

"Hold him out, Richard.  On the defensive.  Do not attack.  Remember
the pass I taught you."

The priest's eyes dimmed.  Hastily he arranged the warm body, closed
the eyes, straightened the legs and folded the stubborn arms, muttering
a prayer the while.

"Heretic though you are, our Lady of Mercy may yet plead for you," he
said; but his words were inaudible to his own ears, because of the
shout which rang behind his shoulders:

"Hold him off, Richard.  I am with you.  Keep your eyes upon his point.
I am here."

As the bush gave before the avenger of blood, La Salle ran swiftly from
that spot.  And all the forest seemed to be moaning for the child thus
cut down before he was grown, and the winds off Couchicing sobbed above
the hemlocks, and the moon sank down as cold as snow, drawing the
purple shadow closer to that white face and the straight, stiff limbs.




CHAPTER XII.

SPLENDOUR.

In one short day the hand of fate had divided the little band of
venturers, destroying the physical life of Flower, leading Woodfield
into the trackless forest and losing him there, and driving Viner into
the unknown country of the south.  Viner's course, during its early
stages, may first be followed, beside the lakes and across the thickly
wooded plains of the land which was later to be known as the northern
part of the State of Maine.

No event marked his journey during the first day.  On the second he saw
in the distance a party of Dutchmen, who also sighted him and gave
chase; but the swift young athlete shook off these slow men with ease.
Later he perceived the smoke of an Indian encampment, and bent off his
course, fearing lest the tribe might be hostile to all of his
complexion.  By doing so he lost his bearings, and while attempting to
regain them wandered at evening into a glorious valley, bright with
flowers, and green with high grass undulating gently in soundless
waves.  Perceiving a line of trees beyond, Geoffrey determined to gain
their shelter, and wait for the stars to guide him back to his
southerly route.

He came to a shallow stream, a mere brook winding through the valley
amid red willow and wild rice and fragrant beds of brown-topped reeds.
A flight of swans passed overhead, their necks outstretched, their
bodies casting gaunt shadows across the grass.  On the near side
patches of bush variegated the plain; beyond, the descending sun cast a
dazzling haze.  The wind was murmuring in the reeds, and the whistlings
of aquatic fowl made a plaintive music.  The lonely boy relieved his
solitude as he walked, by reciting to the tune of the breeze one of the
poetic fables he had learnt at school:

"And when he was unable to restrain his secret, he crept among the
reeds, and murmured, 'King Midas has the ears of an ass.'  But the
reeds betrayed him.  When the wind passed they bent together and
whispered, 'Midas has the ears of an ass--the ears of an ass.'"

Stepping among the sedges, where single stalks shuddered in the cold
water, Geoffrey looked for the ripple which would indicate a place of
crossing.  The reeds inclined their feathery heads towards him, and the
malicious whisper seemed to follow, "Geoffrey has the ears of an
ass--the ears of an ass."  Laughing at the idle fancy, he ran on at the
sight of a line of foam some little way down the stream.  Drawing off
his shoes, he passed across the yellow gravel, the keen water nipping
his ankles, the reeds brushing his head.  Old Thames had often been as
cold, when as a schoolboy he had waded through its weeds hunting the
dive-dapper's nest.

Viner hesitated where the Indian trail split.  That to the left ran
into the sun.  He could scarcely see it, so dazzling was the glory.
That to the right was bare and cold, but leading, had he known it,
direct to the south.  At the foot of a long bank the brook poured away
its water, and above in the fruit-bushes the wild canaries sang away
the hours.  The youth took the bow from his shoulder, held it on end,
and let it fall.  The bow pointed as he wished, as perhaps his fingers
had guided it at the moment of release.  It fell into the sun.

A breath of fire was in the splendour ahead, an acrid smoke crept down,
he heard the crackling of twigs.  It seemed to the traveller that the
sun was consuming the grove before him.  A voice began to sing.
Geoffrey tried to persuade himself that some little yellow bird was
sitting in the sun-grove warbling its soul out to him.  Then an envious
night cloud swooped upon the lord of day and rolled him up in its dewy
blanket, and immediately a palisade, a grass roof, and a thicket
started out like black upon white.  But the song went on.

A log-cabin stood right in the centre of the setting sun, a snaky
palisade winding around, enclosing also a garden planted with corn and
potatoes, where already blade and crinkled leaf pushed from the dark
alluvial soil.  Trees surrounded the house.

Amid the smoke the side of an iron pot showed at intervals.  The singer
held her head back, the slightest frown creasing her forehead.  She was
waiting for the fire to burn clearly, and to encourage it she sang.

Her hair, which hung all about her body, was golden-brown, no one tress
the same shade as another, the whole a bewildering mantle of beauty.
Its wealth became reckless when one crafty ray of sunlight eluded the
cloud and shot across her head.

"Oh, oh!" she sighed, breaking off her bird-like song.  "The sun will
not let my fire burn, and--this wicked wind!"

The breeze, delighting to flirt with so glorious a creature, veered
slyly, and fanned the bitter smoke around her.  She danced away
coughing, her cheeks scarlet, her red mouth gasping for pure air, her
tresses gleaming in their mesh of sunlight.  Her movements were as
supple as the swaying dance of the pine-branch over her.  She tried to
laugh while she caught at her breath, and, failing, fell back panting,
showing her tiny teeth.

Then the violet eyes moved along the path, and all the pretty laughter
went out.  A white hand drifted like falling snow, stole a tress of
hair, and shining pearls began cruelly to bite the silk.

No maid could have desired a fairer vision.

Geoffrey, tall, slender, and flushed, stood between the trees, his bow
in his hands, his Saxon blue eyes meeting the violet glances of
timidity with free admiration.  The maid of the fire-side beheld his
clear complexion, his fair hair tied loosely at the nape of his neck,
his strong figure; and as she watched for a few moments, which were not
measured by time, her bosom began to rise and fall.  Had she not prayed
for such a vision?  She had surely wasted her sweetness long enough
upon the unsatisfying things of her daily life in that lone, hard land.
There was that in her young blood which rebelled against her
convent-like environment, where she had indeed her freedom, but where
the tree of knowledge had not been trained to grow.

Viner stepped out and doffed his feathered cap.

"Fair mistress," he said, bending before this beauty of the grove,
"give me your pardon for coming on you so suddenly.  I am a traveller
on my way to the south."

Madeleine Labroquerie answered him only with her eyes.

"Can you tell me how many English miles I am from Plymouth?"

He looked up, and learnt that the sun had not yet left the grove.  He
saw the cloud of hair waving iridescent.  His gaze wandered over the
beautiful head, until two eyes like purple iris flowers met his.

"But I am not English."

"Yet you speak in English," he protested.

"Why, yes.  In England I was brought up.  I love England; but I am
French, and a Protestant."

Geoffrey looked into the grove as he spoke on softly, mindful of his
duty:

"Tell me, lady, how many days must I travel before I come to the
province of Massachusetts?"

Madeleine Labroquerie had not a word to say.  This handsome stranger
had hardly arrived, and already he suggested departure.

"I must not delay," he faltered.

"My fire!" cried Madeleine, stretching out her hands.  "It will not
burn.  Stranger"--she turned to him with a winsome glance--"will you
_make_ my fire burn?"

She hurried to the smoking pile.  He was beside her instantly.

"You shall not soil those hands."

"They are already smoked and soiled.  And see--a burn!"

Because Geoffrey dared not look Madeleine pouted at his back.  Then she
kicked the smouldering wood, and exclaimed spitefully, "There!"

"Your fire is too closely packed."

"It is not," she snapped, daring him with her eyes.

"You say it is not," he agreed; but loosening the heap.

"I fear that it was," she sighed.  "And the wood is damp."

Geoffrey rebuilt the fire, placing the hot embers to face the wind, and
fanned the sticks until they burst into flame.

The daylight went out like a failing lamp, and a red glow flung about
them as the fire increased.

"I know that you are weary, sir," said the girl winningly.  "Let me
lead you into the house and present you to my mother."

Seeing wonder upon the young man's face, she pointed her shapely hand
through the smoke.

"Down there my father lies," she explained in a hushed voice.  "Deep in
the hollow where the beavers bite the bark at night.  There the Indians
made his grave.  French though we are, the Iroquois have been friendly,
because my father, who was a skilled physician, used them well.  Here
my father hid from the world.  He found a rest here, and yonder he
rests still hidden.  I am with my mother and one native servant, who
loves us because my father saved his life.  And I--I have never known a
friend."

"Lady," said Geoffrey suddenly, "I would serve you if I might."

"Rest you here a few days," she said quickly, "and tell my mother what
is doing in the world."

"I must down to the coast."

"Did you say Plymouth just now?  Learn how ignorant I am.  I did not
know there was a town of that name in all the New World.  I have been
to the English Plymouth.  There I saw the brave ships in her harbour,
and the red and white flags, and the sailors looking over the sea for
what might come sailing by, watching thus and hoping all the day.  That
was a happy time."

"There are yet as good men in Plymouth as ever sailed westward from the
Hoe," said the boy with eager pride.

While he spoke the expression on Madeleine's face altered.  She drew
away, murmuring as she moved, "Here is Madame, my mother."  She added
hurriedly, and as he thought with fear, "I pray you be gracious to her."

Viner turned, and there in the fire glow walked a little old woman in
black, a white cap holding her thin grey hair, her face pale, her eyes
sunken, and her colourless lips a tight line.  She smiled coldly, and
showed no amazement when her daughter presented the traveller.

"You are welcome, sir," she said in English.  "We are poor and lonely
folk left to perish in the wilderness.  My husband was an atheist, a
philosopher, and every man's hand was against him.  He brought his wife
and family to the New World that he might study in peace and learn
somewhat of Nature's secrets.  Last summer he was taken, babbling of
the work of his misspent life, careless of our farewells, heedless of
the state in which he left us.  Philosophy is of a truth the devil's
work, inasmuch as it hardens the heart of man, loses him his God, and
wraps its slave in selfishness."

The old woman signed herself slowly; then suddenly pushed beside the
traveller and snatched at her daughter's arm.

"Cross yourself, girl!  Infidel, cross yourself!" she cried.

"Mother!"  Madeleine shrank back, appealing with her lovely eyes.

"Lutheran!" screamed the little woman.  "Make the holy sign, and so
strive to save your wicked soul from the pit of destruction wherein
your father lies."

"My faith is fixed," murmured the girl.  "Ah, ah!" she panted.

Madame Labroquerie struck the girl thrice upon her fair cheek, staining
the white skin red as a roseleaf.

"Madame, forbear!"  Viner stood between them, his blood hot with shame.
"This is no sight for a stranger and a man to witness."

The little woman smiled at him and abandoned her daughter, who bent
over the fire to hide her crimson face.

"You are English, sir.  Your brave countrymen yield to none in their
respect for a woman, when she be young and fair to see.  Let her be
old, they shall call her witch and fling her in the nearest pond.
There be young witches, good sir, better able to seduce the soul of man
than the old, though they keep neither cat nor toad, nor ride at night
across the face of the moon."

Madame Labroquerie made him a low courtesy, and walked noiselessly to
the gate of the palisade.

"That so lovely a daughter should be cursed with such a mother!"
muttered the youth as he watched her go.

He came to the side of Madeleine, and found her crying.

"My mother has a strange temper.  She has suffered much," the girl
sighed.

There was a pause, one of those rare intervals when ears are opened to
the music of the spheres, and souls may meet.

"You are not happy here," he said.

Her glorious eyes were two blossoms heavy with dew.

"Friend!"  She put out one hand, groping for something to hold.  "I am
miserable."

They stood together, hand in hand.

"She struck you."

There was no answer.  Divine pity dropped upon his heart, sweet and
dangerous pity out of heaven.

"Stay a little," she whispered.  "For the sake of your religion, stay.
If for a day only, stay.  Stay, for a woman's sake."

It was dark in the grove outside the circle of the fire.  He drew at
her fingers.  He bent his head suddenly and breathed upon them.  She
placed her other hand--a cold little hand--upon his.

Then the evening breeze flung itself sportingly into the trees, and all
the branches sprang before it, and the foliage danced and shouted in a
laugh, singing noisily the old secret of the river reeds, singing,
"Midas is a king of gold--a king of gold."

So the fire died down into an angry red, and all the birds of the grove
were songless.  Madame walked alone from the rude house, her small face
white against dark clouds, and passed into the clearing.  The Indian
who worked for the widow and daughter approached with a burden of wood.

"Wind is coming," he said in his own tongue.

"May it blow away heresy and all heretics," muttered the little woman.




CHAPTER XIII.

ENCHANTMENT.

Within the grass-roofed cabin another fire glowed, and beside it
Madeleine entertained the guest, her white hands clasped upon her knee,
her eyes lustrous as she listened to the tale of adventure which her
young companion had to tell.

"And now you would reach the south and bring your countrymen hither,"
she said with the sweet practicability of her sex, after hearing his
story of ventures both by land and sea.  "You would win territory,
perhaps fame.  Then what would you do?"

"Then?  Why, I would return home," answered Geoffrey.

"And then?" the girl pursued, the colour rising in her cheeks.

"Then I would fight for the king."

Madeleine sank back.

"Would your fighting-days never be done?" she sighed reproachfully.
"Friend, the world gives better things than the sword.  Think you," she
went on hurriedly, "we are put upon this world to hate one another and
be always at strife?  Ah no.  We are here to live!  The soldier's day
must pass, his arm grow stiff, and 'tis then he sighs for life--the
sword gives only death.  How wretched is that soldier's lonely end!  It
is love in life that ennobles the body, and 'tis death in love that
clothes the soul in its flight to God."

Her eyes had been fixed upon him.  She cast them down suddenly and sat
trembling.

"My father taught me the use of the sword, and explained to me the
action of the gun," Geoffrey faltered.  "He taught me nothing else."

"Your mother?" Madeleine whispered.

"She died when I was a child."

"She would have taught you.  She would have told you to take the best,"
murmured the girl.

He could see only a rich coil of hair glowing in the firelight.

"But I am untaught," she went on.  "My father was ever a stranger, my
mother has never been a friend.  I grew up with Jean-Marie, my brother,
who was a follower of your creed.  He too believed that life has
nothing better than the sword, so went away to fight, and I have had no
word of him again.  Alone I have taught myself to live, to see that
life is glorious, to find joy in drawing each healthy breath.  I have
studied the birds and animals, and spoken to them, until they have
answered me so that I could understand.  It is so magnificent, this
life!"

A chill crept into the cabin and with it Madame Labroquerie, who peered
at the comely couple, and said in her grating voice: "You are weary,
sir.  Daughter, show our guest where he is to rest."

With another courtesy to the Englishman the bitter little woman passed
into her own room, and almost immediately the muttering of prayers and
clicking of beads disturbed the silence which her entry had created.

"Rest you here," Madeleine whispered, pointing to a palliasse partly
covered by a bear-skin.  "You shall sleep soundly I promise, for I have
filled that palliasse with the sweet-scented grass which grows in
yonder valley.  May you rest there like Endymion, and may his dreams be
yours."

"His dreams were of love--if the old tale be true," said Geoffrey,
flushing at his boldness.

"Soft," she prayed, but she too had flushed.  "My mother's ears are
keen.  God be with you, my friend."

"And with you also," he murmured, and raising her fair white hand he
pressed it reverently to his lips.

No hostile sound disturbed the silence of the grove throughout that
night, and Geoffrey made no stir upon his scented bed, until the sun
streaming into the cabin and the noisy turk, turk, turk of the wild
bush-fowl rendered further sleep impossible.  Having performed the
hasty toilet of that age, when by day and night a man had to be
prepared to fight for his life, he went outside, and was straightway
made welcome to the grove by a brilliant and versatile bluejay, which
obtruded itself upon the stranger and with cheerful chattering
friendliness volunteered to be his guide in return for a little
flattering attention.  But when Madeleine came out into the sun, the
fickle bird deserted the man and paid court to the maid.

It had been Geoffrey's honest determination to proceed that morning
upon his journey, but noon, and then evening, came and found him again
a tenant of the grove.  All day he and Madeleine wandered in the green
valley, like children of innocence in a garden, the girl pointing out
her favourite haunts, the flowery ridges where she would while away
hours in day-dreams, and guiding him along faint paths which her small
feet, and hers only, had trodden into being; and as they so walked
Geoffrey forgot for the time his mission, and became blind to the path
of duty, because the spell of enchantment was over him, and all the
world went far away while Madeleine was laughing at his side, and her
sweet voice was in his ears, and her fragrant presence stirred before
his eyes.  No day had ever been so short, no sun more bright, no
self-surrender ever more complete.

Again the grove was in splendour at the close of the day, and again
Madame Labroquerie met her guest with a grating word of greeting and
her bitter smile; and again the laggard slept upon the scented couch
and had his dreams; and his dreams that night were not of power, nor of
duty, nor of his harassed friends beside Couchicing; but of shaded
bowers, and green valleys, and love in life, and Madeleine.  And once
the girl cried out in her sleep, but neither her mother nor her lover
overheard her unconscious utterance, "I cannot let you go."

But during the day which followed Geoffrey's conscience awoke and
reproached him for this love-in-idleness, and as the evening of that
day drew near his higher self conquered.  Lying at Madeleine's feet, he
told her with averted face that on the morrow he must depart; and she
merely sighed very softly and made no answer, but longed in her heart
that the morrow might never come.

Once again they returned to the grove, where Madame curtsied as before,
and muttered to her guest: "You are welcome, sir.  For the third time I
bid you welcome to my poor home."

Her meaning was unmistakable, and the young man flushed hotly as he
bowed in reply and thanked her for her words.  More he would have said,
but Madeleine touched him lightly and motioned him to keep silent.  He
turned and followed her to the hut, and they partook of food, and
afterwards sat together and talked on, and yearned for one another; and
in the meantime darkness fell, and the fire outside, which was
maintained at night to keep wild beasts at bay, surrounded the cabin
with a roseate glow.


Alone through that twilight Madame walked, muttering as was her wont,
and started in superstitious terror when she saw a tall figure standing
erect, spectral, beside the leaping fire.  A few more steps and the
Frenchwoman recognised a priest.  She hurried forward, and a minute
later genuflected to kiss the cloak of that man of blood, the Abbe La
Salle.

In wonder the priest gave her the blessing which she sought and went on
to question her.  Eagerly Madame responded, telling him her name and
circumstance, explaining her position, and mentioning her longing to
escape from that lonely spot.  Her desires were, like herself, made up
of selfishness.  She did not question the priest concerning the son who
had been driven out by her bitter tongue to join the commandant's
little force; nor did she mention Roussilac's name, because--so
entirely isolated was that shelter in the grove--she was not even aware
that the man who ruled the land was indeed her nephew.  But La Salle
waived her petulant inquiries aside, and asked whether any Englishman
had lately been known to pass that way.  Then Madame shortly acquainted
him with the coming of Viner.


"Bring me here something to eat," said the priest wearily, when he had
obtained the information which he sought.  "Afterwards I will rest me
by this fire."

"Now the saints forbid," cried Madame.  "Shall an infidel lie in my
house, while a holy Churchman sleeps outside?  Out the Lutheran shall
go, and you, my father, must honour my poor home this night."

"'Tis not for me to provoke a quarrel," La Salle replied.  "I may but
fight in self-defence.  Let me have food and a palliasse here."

Madame bent her grey head, and went to do his bidding.

The cabin was in gloom when Madame entered and passed through silently
to procure food for the priest.  Madeleine rose, seeking to be of
service, but the grating voice sent her back to the fireside.  Viner
had also arisen, dimly suspicious.  The girl's head reached his
shoulder, and to put away the thought, which recurred more strongly
when he noted her helplessness, he resorted to selfishness.

"Am I safe?" he asked.

Madeleine gave him a reproachful glance.

"My mother hates all Protestants.  The heathen Indians are merely
animals in her sight; but such as you and I are children of the devil."

"The fire beyond the palisade is burning more strongly," he said.

The door was open, and the glow entered the cabin like moonlight.

"It is to keep away the wolves.  You do not suspect--me?"

"No, no," he said, in a manner that brought a smile to her mouth.  "For
myself I care nothing, but I may not forget my comrades.  I must be
upon my guard for their sake."

The dame reappeared, a mantle over her shoulders and her hands.  She
smiled grimly, and gently addressed her guest:

"I have my birds to feed.  They are the sole companions of my
loneliness, and each night finds them awaiting me beyond the palisade.
They are brighter birds than those of my country, but sadder because
songless.  The saints protect you, sir, in your sleep to-night."

"Shall I come with you, mother?" said Madeleine.

"Why upon this night more than others?" answered Madame bitterly.
"Your way is never mine.  When you shall learn to pray with me then you
may walk with me."

She left the cabin, drawing the door close.

"Stay you here," whispered Madeleine, detaining Viner with a gentle
hand.  "There was that in my mother's manner which makes me fear.  I
will follow her and bring you word."

"I would not have you put yourself to danger."

"For me there is no danger."

"I go with you," he said.

"No!" cried Madeleine, stamping her foot.  "You shall not."

He gave way and let her have her will.

When Madeleine returned with the tidings that a tall French priest was
without, the young man's first impulse suggested that he should rush
out and attempt to silence the spy, but prudence and a girl's hand
detained him.  For the first time Geoffrey shuddered at the thought of
danger.  With those two beautiful eyes watching him tenderly he felt
that it was good indeed to live.

"I shall watch over you," said Madeleine's fearless young voice.  "See,
I will move your palliasse.  Now this thin wall of wattles shall alone
divide us.  We shall be so near that I can listen to your breathing,
and shall hear your faintest whisper.  I pray you trust in me."

"In the morning I shall see you," he urged.  "I shall not depart
without thanking you?"

"Oh, talk not of the morning," she cried.

He seized her fingers, and when he kissed the hand it fluttered like a
bird.

"I shall have my dreams," cried Madeleine, her face uplifted, and her
eyes moistened.  "And they may be so happy that I shall not wake.  See!
Yonder is my resting-place.  The wattle-wall shall separate us.  There
my head will lie.  Give me your sword."

She grasped the hilt, and thrust the blade through the trifling wall.
Then she spoke with averted face: "When you are lying down to rest I
shall tell you why I have done this."

They separated after a few tender words of commendation.  The fire
burnt down, and the north wind played roughly among the trees until the
cabin hummed like a cave.  Madame entered, as noiseless as a cat, and
passed into her room.  The rattling of her beads sounded at intervals,
before sleep deadened the enmity of her mind.

"My hair is long," whispered Madeleine's sweet voice.  "I am passing a
coil through the hole in the wattles.  Hold it, and if you hear
disquieting sounds do not speak, but pull."

"I have it," he whispered, seizing the warm silk enviously.

"The holy angels watch over you," she murmured.

"And you.  As for me, I am already protected by an angel."

"Angel?" she wondered.

"Sainte Madeleine is her name."

"Ah!" she said.

The sound of uneasy breathing arose between the groans of the wind.
After a long pause Geoffrey spoke:

"In sleep I may lose what I am holding."

"Twist it about your fingers," said a whisper.

"Still, I may lose it.  You will draw it away from me when you turn."

"Lie upon it."

"My hair is also long.  I am tying yours to mine."

"I had thought of that," she murmured.

Another period of silence.  Then, in turning, Geoffrey's lips pressed
upon the rich coil, and left it with a kiss.  There came a little
movement and an almost soundless whisper:

"Did you call?"

"You are not yet asleep," he reproved.

"I am watching and listening."

"I would rather you slept while I watched."

"Then I should be the guardian no longer."

"But always the angel."

The glow from without was still over the cabin where Madeleine lay
wide-eyed.  A spider let itself suddenly from the roof, and swung
spinning in wild glee at the end of a silver streak.

"Friend," Madeleine murmured.

"I am listening," he said.

"There is a spider spinning from the cross-beam."

"Would you have me destroy it?"

"No.  Oh, no!  It is so happy in its life.  I do not remember why I
called you.  I had something more to say."

"I shall not sleep until you think of it."

"Shall you go away in the morning?" she whispered suddenly.

There was no reply.

"And leave me?"

"The present is life," he reminded her.

"The thought of the future may destroy the happiness of the present."

"What would you have me do--obey my conscience or my heart?"

"Both," she sighed.

"Let us talk of it in the morning."

"Now.  Oh, the spider is spinning faster--faster."

"The morning," he repeated.

"Now," she breathed.  "But soft!  Set your lips to this hole, and you
shall find my ear."

A sound of restless movement came from Madame's room, and a grating
voice: "From witchcraft, enchantment, and heresy our Lady and the holy
saints protect us."

It was her lips that Madeleine placed to the hole in the wattle wall.




CHAPTER XIV.

FIRESIDE AND GROVE.

Ambition and not chance had brought La Salle thus far from the beaten
track.  He had made it his policy to pursue the Englishmen in that land
until he should have brought about their extermination, knowing well
that any success in that direction would be rewarded by the richest
gift which his master Richelieu had to bestow.  From Onawa he learnt of
Viner's departure for the south on the day following that venture
against New Windsor.  The girl had discovered the young man's track and
gladly accompanied the priest, pointing out the trail, which was
imperceptible to his untrained eyes, and so bringing him to the grove
where Geoffrey tarried in the enchanted sleep.

After Madame Labroquerie had gone to find him food, La Salle
reconsidered his plans by the light of her information.  It was no way
of his to hide his light beneath a bushel, and the slaying of Viner in
that lonely country would, he reasoned, bring him little fame.  If,
however, he should return to lodge the information with Roussilac, all
men would know of his agency.  Therefore, when Madame returned, he
impressed upon her the necessity of detaining Viner for at least three
days within the grove.

"'Tis easy," the little woman muttered.  "I shall be courteous to the
young man, and praise his face and flatter his pride.  Madeleine, my
daughter, shall do the rest.  I warrant you he shall not stir from here
till the soldiers arrive; and then, I trust, a stake shall be prepared
and a goodly pile of faggots for the proper despatch of his heretic
soul."

"I shall see that execution be done upon him," La Salle replied grimly.
"Now get you gone, for I would be alone."

"Your holiness will remain until the morning," Madame prayed.  "I would
then make my confession, and receive the peace of absolution."

"Find me here at the dawn," La Salle answered.  Then, uplifting his
blood-stained hand, he bestowed upon her his benediction and sent her
away.

Not fifty yards distant Onawa stood as a guardian over the man she
loved, staring into the night, heeding every sound in the valley,
dreading the approach of some emissary from her tribe.  The maid had
become an outlaw.  Through her treachery the boy Richard, her own flesh
and blood, had come to his death.  With her own hand she had slain a
man friendly to all her race.  In the forest beyond the river a cruel
death by torture awaited her; her own father would be the first to
condemn her to the fire.  She was thus compelled to stand or fall
beside the priest whom she had aided with that disregard for self which
has ever dominated a woman's actions.

As she stood watching the firelight and the grove, dim ghosts arose and
began her punishment.  She seemed to hear a sound of scuffling, and to
see young Richard and his great hound, Blood, wrestling together, as
they had been wont to do among the pine barrens, to the roar of the
wind and the lost waters.  Again she heard the boyish voice, gasping
and triumphant, "I have beaten him again.  I am stronger than he."  And
as she shivered, there came an echo of her own former words from the
line of tossing trees, "He is brave and strong.  He shall make a man
before he has grown."

Beside the fire La Salle slept, lulled by the wind.  He knew Onawa was
acting as a guard over him, else he had never dared to close his eyes.
Yet his rest became presently broken into by spiritual beings hovering
around in the grove, anxious to point out his future.  The chafing of
boughs, the beating of leaves, the gnawing of the beavers around the
philosopher's grave, with more distant sounds from the country beyond,
were the media these beings employed.  The disturbances passed into his
ear, which pressed upon the palliasse, and entered the torpid brain to
make a dream.

Through the unlighted streets of a city a way was revealed before the
sleeper by means of lightning flashes.  No fellow-creatures were in
sight, and yet the tongues of a multitude shouted as he ran, bells
clashed above, and trumpets blared below.  Before him a vast square
opened, empty and wind-swept, and here the shoutings of the unseen mob
became terrific, here also a mountainous building rose into the clouds,
and midway upon a flight of marble steps sat an old man in white,
crowned with the tiara, extending a red hat towards the yelling
solitude.  The dreamer rushed out to seize the prize; but between the
principality and power, as represented by the scarlet blot rising in
the gale, the silent lightning cut, and between this fire and Urbano
the Eighth a figure descended, and the lightning was a sword, which his
untiring arms flashed between the aspirant and his soul's desires.
"Cardinal-Archbishop!" cried the white figure.  "Bought by blood!"
outcried the man in black, and his sword turned all ways in a flame of
fire.

La Salle awoke with a shudder.  That figure seemed to be upon him,
bending, holding him down with the hands of Briareus.  Casting off the
terrible sleep, he started upright.  A face was indeed over him, and
arms were dragging at his shoulders.  The wind-tossed grove cleared,
with its fire glowing, and sparks flickering like a thousand eyes, and
the sleeper awakened recognised Onawa, who was summoning him to action
in her unknown tongue.

"Perdition!" he muttered.  "The witch haunts me like an old sin."

Onawa went on pleading, pointing wildly at intervals down the wind.

"You shall lead me into no more death-traps!" the priest cried.

The frightened girl brought a knife from her side, and made as though
she would stab him.  Then she pointed again, and, falling to her knees,
indicated her own tracks.

La Salle peered along the glow of the fire and beyond where the sparks
were beaten back, then rose and approached the palisading, Onawa
clinging to him like a shadow.  There was no danger there.  He advanced
to the wattled door, prepared to receive an attack.  When there came no
response to his unspoken challenge he turned back, and Onawa again
pointed along the way she had come.

"Would to God I had spared that child!  His face is there!" the priest
shivered.

"Tuschota!" cried the girl.  She touched the ground, reading him with
her eyes.

A smothered cry broke from the lips of the priest.  Onawa followed his
gaze, which went, not along the trail, nor into the fire-lit grove, but
above where the eastern sky had almost cleared of drift.

"A portent!" moaned the priest.  "'Tis the end of the world, and I am
found with the sword drawn in my hand."

There was war in heaven.  Across the plane of eastern sky hung a wild
picture of forest and rockland where pigmy men rushed together without
shock, where spectral weapons fell silently, and shadowy smoke burst
and rose.  Tiny figures climbed a cliff, and similar grotesques fought
on high and pressed them back.  The combatants appeared ant-like and
ridiculous objects as they swayed reflected upon the floor of heaven.

Onawa watched the spectacle unmoved.  She had witnesse

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